ABSTRACT: English and American Congregationalists like John Cotton, John Owen, and Jonathan Edwards arrived at somewhat Baptist conclusions regarding the regenerate nature of the church and its distinction from the state. Because they also believed in infant baptism and state-sponsored religion, however, they had a dilemma. The steep decline in Congregationalism since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries speaks loudly to their inability to achieve their vision of an infant-baptized, state-wedded, congregationalist, visibly regenerate church, suggesting that the Congregationalist Way was something of a halfway position in church history between the Anglican and Presbyterian polity of the Old World and the Baptists who would come to dominate the New. Baptists certainly saw themselves as the spiritual descendants of these Puritan theologians, principally because Congregationalist arguments for the purity of the church were so very similar in logic to those of their Baptist successors.

For our ongoing series of feature articles, we asked Obbie Tyler Todd (PhD New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary), pastor of Third Baptist Church of Marion, Illinois, and adjunct professor of theology at Luther Rice College & Seminary, to examine the Baptistic inclinations of Congregationalists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

As Puritan John Cotton (1585–1652) journeyed across the Atlantic toward Boston in 1633, he was headed away from the corruptions of the Church of England, not the Church itself. Unlike Plymouth, which had been established in 1620, Massachusetts Bay, settled ten years later, was not a separatist colony. In fact, Cotton was even more leery of separatists who broke away from the state church than he was of bishops who imitated the “popery” of Catholicism. As a Puritan, Cotton believed in “purifying” the Church of England, not leaving it altogether.

However, Cotton was a specific kind of Puritan:1 he was a Congregationalist, a term Cotton himself invented a few years after arriving in Boston. Along with his friend Thomas Hooker, who was also on board the Griffin in 1633, Cotton believed that only autonomous, individual congregations were real churches. No higher ecclesiastical power could exercise legitimate authority over the local church. Hence, there was no such thing as the collective Church of England.2 Headed westward, Cotton was also drifting in a somewhat Baptist direction.

In many ways, on an English ship bound for America, Cotton was a man sailing between two theological worlds. While still holding fellowship with the parish congregations in the Church of England, Cotton did not acknowledge the traditional authority of the Church itself. On the one hand, to Archbishop William Laud in London, Cotton reeked of nonconformity.3 On the other hand, in the eyes of Roger Williams in Massachusetts, Cotton was a bedfellow with the antichrist.

Like the Reformers before them, Congregationalists were a reflection of the very Church they sought to reform. As a result, especially for those in America, Congregationalists continually walked a kind of middle road between the more conservative, high-church sensibilities of Anglicanism and the more localized, democratic beliefs of English religious dissent.4 In time, this middle road came to be called a “halfway covenant.”

John Cotton and ‘The Puritan Dilemma’

John Cotton’s beliefs about the nature of the church were put to the test before he ever set foot in the New World. While in passage to Boston, his wife Sarah gave birth to a son named Seaborn. However, since Cotton believed that the authority to administer sacraments was conferred by particular congregations and not by a national church, he could not by conscience baptize his infant son. He was, in effect, a Congregationalist without a congregation. So, rather than retroactively acknowledging the validity of the baptism once he had been appointed minister of the First Church of Boston, Cotton chose not to baptize Seaborn until he was received into fellowship. Only a local church could admit members and install ministers because this authority had been given exclusively to God’s elect.

Before leaving for America, Cotton had begun to view the church as a regenerate body. Yet instead of withdrawing from his local parish church in England, Cotton had gathered routinely with a more tight-knit circle of believers who were qualified to receive the sacrament and who wished to avoid the more offensive ceremonies of the Church of England. As one historian has noted, “They became, in effect, a congregation within the congregation.”5 Within the accepted bounds of his seventeenth-century English context, Cotton was convening a believer’s church.

As Cotton embraced Congregationalism, his doctrine of the church exhibited a kind of Baptistic logic. The church was not to be “commingled . . . with notorious wicked ones: the Church may be Christs love, yeah, and a fragrant and pure flower in his sight and nostrils, and yet live amongst bryars and thornes.”6 While this pursuit of holiness in the church was by no means unprecedented, Cotton provided more systematic form to views that were relatively novel for their time and place. Although he believed himself to be an active member of the Church of England with some obligation to it, Cotton also envisioned a (1) locally centered, (2) believer-oriented, (3) congregationally governed, (4) infant-baptized (5) state-tied church.

The discordance between the first three components of Cotton’s vision and the last two demonstrate what historian Allen Guelzo and others have called “The Puritan dilemma” — “desiring a purified church, disciplined to include only the elect, which manages to be at the same time a church-in-society that embraces and directs the life of all members of a community.”7 In a sense, Congregationalists wanted to have their ecclesiological cake and eat it too. While pursuing the ideal of a Christian commonwealth where all citizens were made to be virtuous, Congregationalists (or “Independents,” as they were called by their opponents) also believed that each church should be “particular,” founded on a covenant formally entered into by its “godly” members, and that it should be composed only of “visible saints.” When the near-apostate Church of England looked at New England’s Congregationalist churches, they were to see authentic believers, not nominal Christians.

The Puritan “errand” to America was predicated not so much upon geographical as spiritual and moral separateness — that their righteous sojourning in the wilderness would be a visible example to their wayward brothers and sisters back home. As Governor John Winthrop boasted in 1630, Massachusetts Bay was to be a “City on a Hill” (Matthew 5:14).

Evidenced in former Congregationalist Roger Williams, the founder of the first Baptist church in America (established in 1638), believer’s baptism seemed to many to be the logical conclusion of a believer’s church.8 When the first president of Harvard, Henry Dunster, refused to baptize his infant son at Cambridge Church in 1653, his basic argument was unmistakably Baptist in logic: Soli visibiliter fideles sunt baptizendi (“Only visible believers should be baptized”).9 Almost from the beginning of the American experiment, Congregationalism carried within it the seeds of a Baptist awakening.

Isaac Backus, Separate Baptist

With this theological DNA in the Congregationalist doctrine of the church, it is little wonder that their New Light descendants a century later during the Great Awakening became known as “Separates.” Similar to John Cotton, who longed for a purified Church of England, these radical evangelicals longed for “separate” congregations that practiced pure and undefiled religion within the Congregationalist church. And this impulse to purify only continued until it inevitably took Baptist form. A generation later, contending for a more devoted, godly congregation distinct from the moribund state church, Isaac Backus (1724–1806) embodied the Baptistic evolution of Congregationalism: he was a Congregationalist-turned-Separate-turned-Separate Baptist.

To support his views, Backus invoked his Congregationalist forbears: “Since the coming of Christ is only congregational, therefore neither national, provincial nor classical.” Historically speaking, it was a short jump from congregational polity to believer’s baptism. Quoting the Cambridge Platform of 1648, which codified Congregational polity in the colonies in response to the Presbyterianism of Westminster Assembly (1643–1652), Backus declared, “The matter of a visible church are saints by calling.”10 To a lesser degree, even Backus carried in his thinking the same church-state tensions that vexed his Congregationalist ancestors. While denouncing the idea of a state church in Massachusetts, Backus insisted that “no man can take a seat in our legislature till he solemnly declares, ‘I believe the Christian religion and have a firm persuasion of its truth.’”11

There was always a bit of the Puritan dilemma in the early American Baptists themselves.12 (One could argue that this dilemma continues today.) Nevertheless, Backus’s strongest arguments for the church-state distinction and the born-again nature of the church were drawn not from fellow Baptists but from Congregationalists.

John Owen’s View of the New Covenant

Incredibly, when Isaac Backus made his case for the Separate Baptists in A Fish Caught in His Own Net (1768), he made no mention of Roger Williams. In fact, there were more references to Congregationalists John Cotton, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather than there were to the esteemed Baptist theologian John Gill, a near-contemporary of Backus.13 After all, what could better illustrate the set-apart-ness of the church than the theological tradition of those committed to being “visible saints”?

In the treatise, Backus quoted from Congregationalist theologian Jonathan Edwards’s Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742), Edwards’s farewell sermon in Northampton (1750), and his Freedom of the Will (1754), which Backus termed “unanswerable” in its argumentation.14 Still, for all of his admiration for “our excellent Edwards,” Backus sought most of his proof texts from an even more widely regarded Congregationalist luminary: John Owen (1616–1683).15 Drawing from the “learned and renowned author” over a dozen times, Backus believed that Owen, the preeminent Congregationalist theologian of his century, laid out the most convincing case for a Baptist church.

In New England, the name of John Owen carried considerable weight. (Cotton Mather once called the English divine “our Great Owen.”16) With the help of men like Thomas Goodwin, Owen was the chief author of the Congregationalist statement of faith known as the Savoy Declaration (1658), a light revision of the Presbyterian Westminster Confession (1647). Owen was a theological authority on both sides of the Atlantic.17 According to Backus, Owen had traced the corruptions of the Church of England to unbelievers being admitted into its communion, and “the letting go this principle, that particular churches ought to consist of regenerate persons, brought in the great apostasy of the Christian Church.”

Backus’s point was simple: Would New England repeat the declension of the Church of England? Once the church was populated with unbelievers, unbelieving clergymen were sure to follow. Citing Owen’s A Guide to Church-fellowship and Order, Backus restated what Owen had established without any apparent controversy: “On the duty of believers, or of the church, which is to choose, call, and solemnly set apart unto the office of the ministry such as the Lord Christ by his Spirit hath made meet for it according unto the rule of his word.”18 In other words, ministers were called to their churches by real Christians, not half-Christians or so-called Christian statesmen.

“Historically speaking, it was a short jump from congregational polity to believer’s baptism.”

At times, Owen’s theology certainly had a Baptist ring to it. After all, did not the Savoy Declaration allow members of “less pure” churches to partake of the sacraments provided they were “credibly testified to be godly”?19 Although he did not subscribe to believer’s baptism, Owen believed that true faith should be verified, not assumed. He was not alone in this belief. As early as 1636, to confirm whether someone was indeed a “visible saint,” Congregationalist churches required a “conversion narrative,” a public testimony of how one came to saving faith in Jesus Christ.20 In some ways, this public declaration of faith before the church was the closest thing the Congregationalists ever had to believer’s baptism. As historian Sydney Ahlstrom explains, “For the first time in centuries (if not ever), the conversion experience was made normative for church membership on a wide and comprehensive scale.”21 With such a zealous defense of the spiritual boundaries of the church, it is little wonder that many of the descendants of Congregationalists became Baptists.

As several historians have noted, Owen’s view of the new covenant went a step beyond most Puritan theologians of his era and was noticeably similar to that of Baptists. Non-Baptist scholars Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones acknowledge, “Owen affirms that the old and new covenants are different in kind, not degree, in distinction from most of his Reformed orthodox contemporaries. Both positions fall within the broader outlines of Reformed covenant theology, but Owen’s position is certainly not the majority view.”22 As a result, like Isaac Backus, Baptists today have cited Owen to explain a biblical theology of credobaptism.23 In his exposition of Hebrews 8:6–13, for example, Owen writes,

The new covenant is made with them alone who effectually and eventually are made partakers of the grace of it. “This is the covenant that I will make with them. . . . I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,” etc. Those with whom the old covenant was made were all of them actual partakers of the benefits of it; and if they are not so with whom the new is made, it comes short of the old in efficacy, and may be utterly frustrated. Neither does the indefinite proposal of the terms of the covenant prove that the covenant is made with them, or any of them, who enjoys not the benefits of it. Indeed this is the excellence of this covenant, and so it is here declared, that it does effectually communicate all the grace and mercy contained in it to all and every one with whom it is made; with whomsoever it is made, his sins are pardoned.24

Reflecting upon this excerpt from Owen, Reformed Baptist theologian Pascal Denault concludes, “In reading these lines, one asks oneself on what basis Owen practiced child baptism.” According to Denault, Baptists have “the same understanding” of the covenants as Owen.25 Owen’s view was Baptistic in its logic because of his emphasis upon the completely new nature of the new covenant and not upon its continuity with the old. Baptists used the same rationale to argue for a baptism by faith in Christ and not by bloodline or ancestry. With Owen, Baptists of all generations have affirmed that the covenant of grace is “a new, real, absolute covenant, and not a reformation of the dispensation of the old.”26 To the perennial question of whether Baptists are truly Reformed, John Owen forced many to instead ask, “Are the Reformed Baptistic?”

Jonathan Edwards and the ‘Halfway Covenant’

Nevertheless, by the late seventeenth century, the Puritan dilemma had introduced a contradiction into the Congregationalist churches of New England. Traditionally, church membership and admittance to the Lord’s Supper was reserved for those who had undergone a genuine conversion experience, and only the children of church members were permitted to be baptized. However, over time, as infant baptism became increasingly synonymous with citizenship in a religious state, membership in the church devolved into a kind of hereditary birthright.

By virtue of being born into the local parish, second- and third-generation Congregationalists expected that they should enjoy the privileges of membership without being converted. Baptized individuals who had never been reborn were eventually allowed to have their own children baptized. The Puritan doctrine of “visible sainthood” was being compromised by the Puritan doctrine of a Christian commonwealth. Although opposed by Increase Mather and other Puritan leaders, this “Halfway Covenant” — or “large Congregationalism,” as it was first termed — was approved by New England churches in 1662.

In Northampton, Massachusetts, Reverend Solomon Stoddard (1643–1729) subscribed fully to this new Halfway Covenant. Not long after assuming the pastorate at Northampton, as his church became populated with more unconverted members than converted, Stoddard, the successor of Eleazar Mather (the brother of Increase Mather), went a step further in innovating his Lord’s Supper policy. According to Stoddard, the Table should be open to all members, regenerate and unregenerate, excepting those who lived publicly scandalous lives. By 1700, this practice was set in stone at the church. In short, natural birth, rather than the second birth, had become the prerequisite for partaking of the Lord’s Communion. The Supper had been transformed into a means of conversion. As the so-called “Pope of the Connecticut Valley,” Stoddard only extended his influence through this new policy, including among the unregenerate.

Stoddard’s successor at Northampton was also his grandson, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Despite the family tie, throughout the 1730s and 40s, Edwards grew to despise the Halfway Covenant (or “Stoddardeanism”). He believed that churchgoers had begun to confuse law and gospel, ignoring the fact that sincere faith in Christ should be “visible” in a person’s life.27 After experiencing and interpreting the revival of religion in Northampton during the Great Awakening, Edwards was more convinced than ever of the power of a Spirit-indwelt heart to manifest itself in everyday life. In The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Edwards gives five positive signs of genuine revival: (1) it raises people’s esteem of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior, (2) it leads to repentance of corruptions and lust and to righteousness, (3) it exalts one’s view of Scripture, (4) it convinces people of the truths revealed in Scripture, and (5) it compels people to truly love God and neighbor.28

Not surprisingly, Edwards’s religion of the heart carried over into his doctrine of the church. In December 1748, Edwards finally told one of his parishioners that he must profess Christianity before he could take the Lord’s Supper.29 Given that Edwards was reforming his grandfather’s long-held practice and that many of his relatives were beneficiaries of the Stoddard kingdom, this decision did not go over well. As Edwards confided to his friend John Erskine in 1749, “I dared no longer proceed in the former way, which has occasioned great uneasiness among my people, and has filled all the country with noise.”30

Edwards articulated his view in A Humble Inquiry (1749): “None ought to be admitted to the communion and privileges of members of the visible church of Christ in complete standing, but such as are in profession and in the eye of the church’s Christian judgment godly or gracious persons.”31 Edwards’s standing suffered additional harm in a controversy that involved disciplining children over an inappropriate book. Even with that controversy in mind, however, it is not too much to suggest that Edwards lost his pastorate in 1750 because he believed that the church was for Christians.

Baptists knew the story of Edwards’s dismissal well and seemed to embrace him as one of their own. In his work on Baptist polity, James L. Reynolds, professor of theology at Furman Academy, wrote a century later,

In the famous controversy between Pres. Edwards, and Solomon Williams, concerning the half-way covenant, the former took the broad scriptural ground, that none but such as gave a credible evidence of their faith in Christ should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper. But, as a pedobaptist, he was obliged to admit that those who had been baptized in infancy were “in some sort members of the Church.” In this they were both agreed. Here Williams erected his strong battery, and managed it with great effect. He proved that the position of his opponent, if maintained, would annihilate infant baptism. Either that ordinance must be given up, or Edwards must surrender. He did not choose to abandon infant baptism, and was vanquished, not by the truth of his opponent, but by his own error.

Praising Edwards’s “heavenly spirit,” Reynolds concluded that Edwards simply had not followed the logical conclusions of his own sublime theology.32 In his Terms of Communion (1844), R.B.C. Howell, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Nashville, likewise praised Edwards for opposing “Mr. Stoddard’s system” and thus leading his church “to a remarkable revival.”33 From the Northeast to the South to the West, Baptists boasted in Edwards as a kind of proto-Baptist who never completely unshackled himself from his Congregationalist context. But whereas Edwards had failed to solve the Puritan dilemma, Baptists had a biblical solution. To maintain a believer’s church, one had to practice believer’s baptism.

Baptists Untimely Born

Although it is true that Jonathan Edwards ended his career in the Presbyterian denomination and no longer thought of churches as completely autonomous, scholars Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott note that Edwards “likely did not regard issues of church governance as having the importance that certain other doctrines did.”34 What mattered even more to Edwards than the exact polity of the church was the regenerate nature of the church. After all, so important was the latter that it cost him his pulpit of twenty years. As George Marsden explains, Edwards “was willing to give up his own and his family’s worldly security for the cause of protecting eternal souls. He pursued that personally disastrous course because he was convinced that the logic of his conversionist theology demanded it.”35 Edwards’s logic was unwittingly, yet strikingly, Baptistic.

To the question of whether Edwards and his seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Congregationalist brethren would be Presbyterians or Baptists if they lived in the twenty-first century, one can only speculate. Just as the Congregationalist church produced its fair share of Separate Baptists in the eighteenth century, it also generated a number of New School Presbyterians in the nineteenth. Nevertheless, what is undeniable is that, with the fall of the last Congregationalist state church in 1833, the Puritan dilemma looked very different than it had in 1633. Gone were the days of the so-called Christian commonwealth, but the ideal of a church composed of “visible saints” remained. As the number of Congregationalist churches declined precipitously in the nineteenth century, a community of people grew quickly — many of them former Congregationalists who had long rejected state-sponsored governments and who still believed in a (1) locally centered, (2) believer-oriented, (3) congregationally governed church. They were Baptists. Their solution to the Puritan dilemma was simple and strangely familiar to Congregationalist ears: “Only visible believers should be baptized.”

Jesus didn’t grow up studying the Gospel of John, 2 Corinthians, or Hebrews. Instead, books like Leviticus, Psalms, and Isaiah shaped our Savior’s mission and understanding of God and his ways. What we call the Old Testament was Jesus’s only Bible. He summarized it as “the Law and the Prophets,” which he saw as lastingly relevant for his followers: “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). He also stressed that Moses’s instructions continue to matter today: “Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19).

Later, when Paul took his three missionary journeys, Matthew’s Gospel did not yet exist, and there was no book of Revelation. Yet Christians still had authoritative sacred writings, for Paul could declare, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4; see also 1 Corinthians 10:11). The same apostle could stress (with the Old Testament principally in view) that “all Scripture is . . . profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” and he could urge his pastoral apprentice, “Preach the word!” (2 Timothy 3:16; 4:2).

Awed and Asking New Questions

These ideas were new for me in the autumn of 1995, when my wife and I moved to New England and I began my MDiv at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Until that time, I knew the Old Testament declared the global problem of sin for which Christ was the saving solution. I also knew that the initial part of my Bible was filled with stories like the exodus (Exodus 14–15), David’s defeat of Goliath (1 Samuel 17), and Daniel’s deliverance from the lions’ den (Daniel 6) — all of which displayed God’s kindness and greatness.

Yet it was during that initial fall semester of seminary, sitting in Theology of the Pentateuch, that my heart first began to burn, awed by God’s glory and amazed at Scripture’s unity and story climaxing in Christ. Other classes — on biblical theology, Hebrew and Greek language, Old and New Testament exegesis, and the New Testament’s use of the Old — overwhelmed me with the perfections of divine beauty and with the purposes of God from Genesis to Revelation.

Yet I still had so many questions, especially related to how the biblical covenants progress and interrelate. What was the church to do with Old Testament laws and promises — especially those given to a different people under a different covenant? How does old-covenant Israel relate to the new-covenant church? Should Scripture’s teaching and progression lead me to become a Baptist or a Presbyterian? In salvation, how should we understand the doctrine of imputation, and how do justification and sanctification relate?

Such queries swirled in my head as I came to the end of my graduate studies. But what was still missing at this time was sustained, dependent reflection on the significance of Jesus Christ, whose person and work alone supply answers to these important questions. Another five years would pass before I would have a conversation that would reorient my life onto a new path.

Equipped to Magnify God’s Majesty

In 2000 I began my PhD at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, majoring in Old Testament Literature and minoring in both Old Testament Language and New Testament Theology, the latter because I always wanted to have a grasp of “the whole counsel of God” for the church (Acts 20:27). I went deep and far, growing much and ever maintaining my conviction that the Bible in its entirety is God’s written word.

As a minister, I wanted to study God’s word carefully, practice it rightly, and teach it faithfully — in that order (Ezra 7:10). I resolved that in my instruction, counseling, and writing I would join Paul in declaring, “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” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Careful exegesis of Galatians 3 and whole-Bible theology made me a convictional Baptist, and I fell more in love with the wondrous glory of our holy, holy, holy God.

Along with my doctoral courses and teaching ministry as an associate pastor, John Piper’s Desiring God, Future Grace, Pleasures of God, and Brothers, We Are Not Professionals developed my doctrinal sensitivities and expanded my capacity for treasuring God in his matchless worth. They also shaped within me a rock-solid theology of suffering that prepared me for future ministry and for leading my family through life’s storms. Yet there was something — or someone — still missing from the center of my solar system. I still needed to see that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). We fully and properly encounter God’s glory by looking at Jesus.

‘Very Little About Jesus’

In the summer of 2005, my family of five moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, so I could begin my first full-time teaching post as an Old Testament professor. Upon my request (and with some help from Tom Schreiner), John Piper agreed to have lunch with me. I shared with him and Justin Taylor, his assistant at the time, how much a passion for God’s glory had captured me and how eager I was to proclaim the beauties and bigness of God from the initial three-fourths of the Bible.

After listening for a while, Pastor John asked Justin if he had any reflections. Justin offered a single statement that shook me to the core and that God used to reorient my affections and set me on a path of discovery and awe that I am still journeying today. He said, “I hear a lot about God’s glory and very little about Jesus.”

Through Christ and for Christ

In the weeks and months that followed, I considered whether, as a Christian, my interpretive approach and ministry practice aligned with the truth that there were “mysteries” kept secret in the Old Testament that only the lens of Christ’s coming could disclose (Romans 16:25–26), thus making the apostolic witness necessary for properly grasping all that God wants us to gain from the Old Testament (Acts 2:42; Ephesians 2:20).

“Getting the Old Testament right demands that we keep Christ at the center.”

Stated differently, did I interpret and preach old-covenant materials in a way that embraced the twin realities that only spiritual people can read a spiritual book (1 Corinthians 2:13–14) and that only through Christ does God lift the veil, enabling those once spiritually blind to fully understand and apply the Old Testament’s significance (2 Corinthians 3:14–15)? Was I seeking a knowledge of God’s glory “in the face of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:6)?

Furthermore, did I rightly see that God designed the whole Old Testament to move us to magnify the Messiah, savoring Jesus as the climax of Old Testament history (Mark 1:15; Galatians 4:4), the focus of Old Testament prophecies (Matthew 11:13; Luke 16:16; Acts 3:18, 24), the Yes of every promise (2 Corinthians 1:20), and the end of old-covenant law (Romans 10:4; Galatians 3:24–26)? Indeed, God created all things (including the Old Testament) in the Son, through the Son, and for the Son (Colossians 1:16). The very Spirit that guided the Old Testament prophets ever seeks the Son’s glory (John 16:13–14; 1 Corinthians 12:3; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Jesus stands as both the answer key and the hermeneutical algorithm for rightly interpreting the Old Testament (2 Corinthians 3:14). We must read the Old Testament through Christ and for Christ. It was at this time that I began to see the Old Testament for the Christian Scripture it is.

Behold the King in His Beauty

Over the next many years, my family and I were active members at Bethlehem Baptist Church, feasting week by week on John Piper’s preaching ministry and enjoying the fellowship of saints who cherished Christ and God’s work in the world. In 2009 I became one of the founding professors of Bethlehem College and Seminary, and I continued to grow in my understanding of how the Testaments relate and how the Old Testament is, as my friend Jim Hamilton likes to say, “a messianic document written from a messianic perspective to instill messianic hope.”

After the early Christians met the resurrected Christ, they gained understanding into the true meaning of the Old Testament, seeing in it a message of the Messiah’s suffering and triumph and the universal mission he would spark (Luke 24:45–47; Acts 26:22–23). This is not a message forced upon the Old Testament from the outside. No! Through the Old Testament prophets, God promised the gospel of Jesus we now celebrate (Romans 1:1–3). Yet even in the promise, God maintained the “mystery . . . kept secret for long ages” — the mystery that is now being made known to all nations “through the prophetic writings” themselves (Romans 16:25–26)!

Whether a pastor or Bible-study leader, a stay-at-home mom or a businessman, if you are a Christian, the Old Testament is for you. Read Genesis considering how Abraham saw and rejoiced in Jesus’s day (John 8:56), even if from afar (Matthew 13:17; Hebrews 11:13). When reading of Israel’s wilderness journey or through Moses’s Deuteronomic sermons, be ever mindful that Moses wrote of Christ (John 1:45; 5:46–47). Look for how books like Judges, Esther, and Ecclesiastes bear witness about Jesus (John 5:39), and study Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Malachi convinced with Peter that “all the prophets” spoke of Christ’s suffering, the church’s rise, and the forgiveness that all believers can enjoy through Jesus (Acts 3:18, 24; 10:43). As you do, you will increasingly “behold the king in his beauty” (Isaiah 33:17), and your life will never be the same (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Every Page Christian

As many Old Testament texts make clear (for example, Deuteronomy 30:6, 8; Isaiah 29:18; 30:8; Jeremiah 30:2–3, 24; Daniel 12:9–10), God revealed to the prophets that “they were serving not themselves but you” as they carefully searched their Scriptures to discern more about the person of Christ, the time of his coming, and the glories that would follow (1 Peter 1:10–12).

Getting the Old Testament right demands that we keep Christ at the center (1 Corinthians 2:2; Colossians 1:28). We must account for how redemptive history progresses through the various covenants climaxing in Christ. A wrong view of Jesus’s person and work will lead to a wrong view of salvation, missions, Christian ethics, the appropriation of biblical promises, the roles of men and women, the church’s governance and makeup, the church’s relationship to Israel and the state, and so much more. But when Jesus is elevated as both the necessary light and lens, we are equipped with God’s help to answer such questions, ever delighting in all Christian Scripture — both the Old and New Testaments.

Suppose I wrote you a letter, about five pages long, in which I explain in some detail a controversial behavior of mine a week ago that people have been misinterpreting. And suppose that in the letter, I describe the behavior in a paragraph, and I give the background for it, and I explain my motivations, and I tell you about the outcome and where it all led, and I explain how it relates to my faith in Jesus and how his death and resurrection give me hope.

And suppose you read the letter, and then you take the paragraph from the letter, the one that simply described the controversial behavior, and you lifted it out of the letter, and you ignored everything I said about the background and my motivation, and everything I said about the outcome of the behavior, and everything I said about how it relates to my faith and the death of Jesus, and you simply spread all over social media that “John Piper has this behavior” — with none of the context that I provided.

What would you be doing?

Love’s Surest Measurement

One answer to that question is that you would be disobeying this text. When the lawyer says at the end of Luke 10:27 that you should not only love God, but also love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus approved of that answer. Verse 28: “You have answered correctly.” So, one of the teachings of this text is that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves — which is about as radical a thing as you can say.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is not about self-esteem. It’s about the fact that every one of us does what we think will make us happy. We don’t walk in front of trucks. We don’t drink poison. We don’t jump off buildings. We put a roof over our head when it’s raining. We wear warm clothes in the winter in Minnesota. We try to get enough sleep and exercise to function. We want good grades for ourselves in school. We want a job that will put bread on our table. And we want to be treated fairly. We want people to read our letters fairly.

So, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is to keep them from walking out in front of trucks, or drinking poison, or jumping off buildings. To help them have a roof over their heads. To help them have clothes in winter and sleep and exercise and good grades and jobs and be treated fairly. Because all of that we want for ourselves, which is what it means to love ourselves.

The apostle Paul applied this command to marriage in Ephesians 5:28–29, saying, “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies [as they love themselves]. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.” That’s what “self-love” means. And of itself, it’s not wrong. To love your neighbor as you love yourself is to make your own self-care the measure of your care for others. It’s very radical. Crazy radical. It’s absolutely life-revolutionizing. Churches full of people like this, scattered throughout the cities, would be gloriously strange.

Will You Love Luke?

To read my letter in a way that you would never want your letter to be read is to disobey this text. Why in the world am I pointing that out? Because that’s the way millions of people read the Gospel of Luke, especially when it comes to this parable — the parable of the good Samaritan. Millions of unbelievers love this parable and ignore what Luke teaches. And I’m saying that when you read the Gospel of Luke that way, you are disobeying the Gospel of Luke. You’re disobeying Jesus and not loving Luke.

It is disobedient to Jesus and unloving to Luke to take this parable, lift it out of its Gospel-setting, and use it to build your own wrath-omitting, repentance-omitting, faith-omitting, blood-omitting, justification-omitting ethic of good deeds. That is the playbook of theological liberalism, which rejects the authority of the Bible but keeps the Bible, picking and choosing the parts it likes, and treating the rest as legend or mythology.

And I’m saying that is disobedient to Jesus and unloving to Luke. When you treat a biblical author that way, you are breaking the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. In this case, to love Luke as you love yourself. If you love Luke, if you treat him the way you want to be treated — if you read him the way you want to be read — you will keep in mind the other crucial things that he says when you read this parable.

For example, John the Baptist warns about the wrath of God that is coming (3:7). Jesus warns that unless we repent, we will all likewise perish (13:3). Jesus said not to fear those who simply kill the body, but to fear him who, after he has killed, can cast into hell (12:5). So, one burning question not only for the lawyer, the priest, and the Levite in this text, but also for the Good Samaritan is this: Will they escape the wrath of God?

And if we say to Luke or to each other, “There’s no wrath in this story,” wouldn’t Luke say, “Do I have to put everything in every paragraph? Isn’t it enough that I tell you about these things all over my Gospel? Is it too much to ask that you would keep them in mind as you read? And, oh — this is a story about inheriting eternal life [verse 25].”

Another example is the forgiveness of sins. Jesus says in Luke 5:24 that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And in Luke 7:47 he says, “He who is forgiven little, loves little,” implying that genuine love for others is going to flow from a sense of having been forgiven by God.

Luke’s List Goes On

Or then there’s justification. In Luke 18:11–14 Jesus says there was a boastful man who went up to the temple, and there was a broken man who went up to the temple. The broken man said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” To which Jesus responded, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.” That has something to do with eternal life.

And then there’s inner transformation. In Luke 6:43–44 Jesus says, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit.” And later he says, “Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within” (11:40–41). Outward good deeds without inward change is Pharisaism. So, what is the lesson of the Samaritan’s good deeds?

Or what about faith in Jesus, allegiance to Jesus? In Luke 12:8–9 Jesus says, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” Will the Good Samaritan be acknowledged before God?

Or what about that other time a man came to Jesus in Luke 18:22 and, like this lawyer, asked how to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, after all the man’s law-keeping, this: “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Bottom line: “Follow me. Confess me. Without me, no eternal life.” Does it matter if the Good Samaritan follows Jesus?

Or most important, what about the blood of Jesus shed for the forgiveness of sin? Jesus says in Luke 22:20, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And the new covenant is this: “You believe in me; I forgive your sins.” As Luke 24:47 says, “Repentance for the forgiveness of sins [will] be proclaimed in his name to all nations.”

“Jesus changed the question from ‘What kind of person is my neighbor?’ to ‘What kind of person am I?’”

So, when we come to read the parable of the good Samaritan, we should love Luke the way we love ourselves. We should read him the way we would want to be read. As I was preparing for this message, I heard Luke, so to speak, say to me, “Pastor John, as you talk about this parable, please remind people of what I said about wrath and repentance and justification and the blood of Jesus and forgiveness of sins and faith in Jesus.” Yes, Luke, I will.

With that great vision of reality, let’s watch this story unfold.

Law-Keeping Isn’t the Path

In verse 25, an expert in the Mosaic law, called a “lawyer,” puts Jesus to the test by asking, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” You don’t want to approach Jesus like that — putting him to the test. If you ask Jesus a question, it better be because you want to know, not because you want to trip him up. If you come to Jesus like the lawyer, he will trap you in your own words. We’re going to watch it happen.

In verse 26 he turns the test around and says, in effect, “You’re the expert in the law — you tell me.” The lawyer answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (verse 27). To which Jesus responds in verse 28, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

Now, there are two ways you can understand Jesus’s approval of the lawyer’s answer. Jesus may be saying, “That’s right, Mr. Lawyer, if you choose the path of law-keeping as a means of getting right with God and a means of earning your way into eternal life, then following these two commandments is the way to go about it. Love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself. And you must do it perfectly if you’re going to show that you deserve to be in the presence of the perfectly holy God by law-keeping.”

If that’s the way you understand it, then Jesus would be showing the lawyer that he’ll never be able to do that, and that he should look away from law-keeping to the work of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, and salvation by grace, not works. That would be a theologically, orthodox, and biblically faithful way of understanding Jesus’s approval of the lawyer’s answer.

Love Is on the Path

But there’s another way to understand this text, which I’m inclined to think is closer to the mind of Christ. Namely, Jesus agrees that loving God and loving your neighbor is the path that leads to the inheritance of eternal life — the only path that leads to that inheritance. It is the path that you are on right now, if you are a Christian — if you are saved by grace through faith.

Luke wants us to know, in the context of his whole Gospel, that Jesus died for our sins, and that we are justified, and that our sins are forgiven by faith, not by works of the law, and that we receive the Holy Spirit and are changed from the inside by turning to Jesus and renouncing law-keeping as a way of earning eternal life. But rejecting law-keeping as a way of earning eternal life does not mean rejecting love — for God and neighbor — as the path that leads to eternal life. And the only path.

The apostle Paul said to the Christian church at Corinth, “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” (1 Corinthians 16:22). No love for God, no eternal life. That’s true for Christians. And earlier in the same book he said, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). No love for people, no eternal life.

Why? This is not about earning life. The apostle John puts it like this: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. . . . Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 3:14; 4:8). Loving God and loving neighbor is necessary to inherit eternal life not because it is a work of merit to earn life, but because it is a fruit of the Spirit that proves life is present.

So, in this parable, we are going to be shown the path of love that leads to eternal life. We can walk this path by faith, trusting the blood-bought promises of Jesus, or we can miss the path and join the lawyer in his desire to justify himself. Self-justification is the opposite of faith and the opposite of love.

A (Shocking) Story for an Answer

Verse 29: “But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” In other words, “Which groups of people don’t I have to love?” Jesus likes questions — but not that kind. Questions that are designed to escape the sacrificial path of love, Jesus won’t answer. So, instead of answering, he tells a story. And at the end of the story, he’s going to turn the lawyer’s question upside down — and look us right in the eye. Verses 30–35:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho [a drop of about 3,500 feet in 17 miles], and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii [two days wages, maybe $400] and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.”

There are at least three shocking things here.

First, it is shocking that the people who pass by on the other side, leaving the man half dead to die, are the ones who serve most closely to the holy place of God: the priest, who serves in the temple, and the Levite, who assists priests. I thought maybe Jesus would make one of the bad guys a lawyer. That would work, wouldn’t it? But it seems that the point is this: getting religiously “close” to the most sacred acts, events, and places does not necessarily make you a loving person. This is very sobering to those of us who spend most of our lives with God’s sacred book and God’s sacred church. Very sobering.

Second, it is shocking that the hero of the story is a Samaritan. John 4:9 says that “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Luke 9:53 says that the Samaritans wouldn’t receive Jesus and his apostles because they were going up to Jerusalem. The Samaritans are Jewish half-breeds who intermarried with the pagan people of the land and set up their own temple. They are outcasts and unclean.

And the shocking thing is not that a Samaritan cared for a Jew (the half-dead man is never called a Jew), but that a Samaritan surpassed a priest in becoming the kind of person Jesus came into the world to create. The message is clear: this Christ does not limit his transforming work to one ethnicity.

Third, it is shocking how over-the-top lavish the Samaritan’s care is for a total stranger. Bound his wounds. Poured oil and wine. Let him ride the Samaritan’s animal. Took care of him at an inn. Gave him $400 for his needs. Promised to return and pay more. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your [lavish] good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

“Christ died to create a people who are so secure, and so content in Christ, that we move toward need, not comfort.”

What’s the difference between the religious leaders and the Samaritan? The one difference that Jesus points out is that the Samaritan felt compassion. Verse 33: “A Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had [felt] compassion.” Compassion is a feeling, not an act. But oh, how it overflowed in lavish acts — gifts of time and money and risk. But the root was compassion. And compassion rooted in love for God requires a new heart.

How Compassion Moves

The story ends in verses 36–37 with Jesus turning the lawyer’s original question upside down. The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor? Which group don’t I have to love?” Jesus says,

“Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor [became a neighbor] to the man who fell among the robbers?” [The lawyer] said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Jesus changed the question from What kind of person is my neighbor? to What kind of person am I? He changed the question from What status of people are worthy of my love? to How can I become the kind of person whose compassion disregards status?

How can I become the kind of person who, instead of moving to the other side of the road (or the other side of town), moves toward need and sacrifice and risk? For decades at Bethlehem one of our standing mottos for the neighborhoods and for the nations was this: “Christians move toward need, not comfort.”

And hundreds have found, as Jesus says, that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). More blessed to move toward need than comfort. The risk of crossing the road, or the ocean, is worth it.

As we move to the Table, remember this: among the many things in Luke’s Gospel in which this parable is embedded, is this great word of Jesus: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Christ died to create a people who are so secure, and so content in Christ, that we move toward need, not comfort.

Have you ever assumed that you’re enjoying spiritual progress or making the most of life simply because you know you should be? I have. The logic ran like this:

Christians redeem the time.
I am a Christian.
Therefore, I must be redeeming the time.

We walk by faith, not sight — but that does not mean wandering in fiction. Perhaps this application will resonate. You may wonder many days, Why is my Christian life so pedestrian? So underwhelming? So stagnant? Instead of letting this dryness expose us, we remind ourselves that we are Christians, after all, and if anyone is enjoying the benefits of the Christian life, we must be. We should be, by the flick of faith’s wand, becomes, we actually are. I know that Jesus came to give me life to the full, I am his disciple, and therefore, by faith, I really am supping on the full plate. I believe; therefore I am.

But we might not be. In reality, we may really be walking unworthily of our calling, domesticated in our witness, living but half-awake. We really can be wasting time, living backward to our calling, playing footsie with the world. We shouldn’t be content and happy living well beyond a cannon-shot away from the front lines where fullness of joy dwells, where the Savior dwells.

In other words, the yawning might indicate that you and I really can live a slouching, blunted, anemic, sleepy, weak, unconvinced Christian life — not in all things, perhaps, but often in one main thing: mission. Too many of us live civilian lives in this Great War and, therefore, remain only half-happy, half-alive, half-thrilled. And instead of realizing it (and repenting of it), we can believe this must be it for now. But small joys and puny purpose should find us out. Our spirits groan, and our indwelling and grieved Friend whispers, implores, There is so much more. And there is.

So, I’d like to rouse us from our Western Shires with a song, as the dwarves’ music did for Bilbo when “something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick” (The Hobbit, 16). This hymn will make you want to wear a sword instead of a walking stick, to explore mountains perilous and great. It reminds us that the story is still being written, that souls still need saving, that we face a task unfinished — one that our Lord calls us to complete.

Facing a Task Unfinished

“Facing a Task Unfinished” was written in the early twentieth century by Frank Houghton, an admirer of Hudson Taylor and a missionary himself to China. The song boasts a rich history as part of the battle cry for missions to the Pacific Rim, according to Keith and Kristyn Getty, who have repopularized the hymn.

As more is done by prayer than prose, I would like us to ask the Lord of the harvest to make and send us as laborers, using Houghton’s lyrics as a guide. But be careful as you join in these four prayers, for when we shut our closet doors, we never know what adventures he will sweep us off to. O trustworthy Lord, awaken in us a daring faith — one we shall have no cause to regret in this life or the life to come. Hear us for your great glory and for our everlasting delight.

Rebuke Our Slothful Ease

Facing a task unfinishedThat drives us to our knees,A need that, undiminished,Rebukes our slothful ease,We who rejoice to know theeRenew before thy throneThe solemn pledge we owe theeTo go and make thee known.

Father, we start with confession. The commission your dear Son charged us with — the commission he himself sends us on and promises his presence for — how little do we concern ourselves that it is left unfinished? How little does it send us across sea, or street, or down to our knees? This world needs Christians shining in the darkness; how often have we pulled baskets over ourselves? The need is undiminished; how little can we say the same of ourselves? If anything in this world calls for energy, for tenacity, for wakefulness, for risk, is it not your mission? And yet how often do we answer your imperial claims with slothful ease? So much consumption, so little commission.

By our confession as Christians, by our baptism, by our membership in the visible church, we have solemnly pledged to participate in your mission. Give us grace to proclaim your excellencies. Souls are dying. What are we still here for if not to make you known?

May We Heed Their Crying

Where other lords beside theeHold their unhindered sway,Where forces that defied theeDefy thee still today,With none to heed their cryingFor life and love and light,Unnumbered souls are dyingAnd pass into the night.

Father, other lords vie with you. Their servants are zealous for wickedness; their evangelists cross land and sea to make sons of hell. The god of this earth seeks dominion, and while his demons trembled on earth before your Son, his forces have not yet retreated. And the chief place of their dominion is over the souls of men, blinding men from your Son’s glory and dragging them down to hell with themselves.

“Too many of us live civilian lives in this Great War and, therefore, remain half-happy, half-alive, half-thrilled.”

Look out upon the dying masses, Father. Have compassion on these unnumbered souls unable to discern their left hand from their right. And work your compassion in us. They live next door; they work with us; we eat at the same restaurants and play the same games. Give us wisdom to hunt souls, to labor while it’s day, to be uncomfortably bright witnesses to your beloved Son. And send the required number of us into those lands drowning in false religion to draw in a people from every language, tribe, and nation for your name’s sake.

To Thee We Yield Our Powers

We bear the torch that flamingFell from the hands of thoseWho gave their lives proclaimingThat Jesus died and rose;Ours is the same commission,The same glad message ours;Fired by the same ambition,To thee we yield our powers.

Father, let us know what it is to bear this flaming torch. Love compels us, your glory spurs us, duty points us, and the cloud of witnesses cheers us to bring the gospel to the lost. Where would we be without former generations who resolved to give their lives proclaiming that Jesus died and rose and reigns? May we not be a generation of vile ingratitude that receives knowledge of eternal life from the bloody labors of others but is unwilling to pass such knowledge along ourselves.

Give us that same ambition. Whatever powers we have, hone them; whatever gifts we have, wield them. Turn the world upside down yet again. May we not shrink from any cross, lest in so doing, we refuse every crown.

From Cowardice Defend Us

O Father, who sustained them,O Spirit, who inspired,Savior, whose love constrained themTo toil with zeal untired,From cowardice defend us,From lethargy awake!Forth on thine errands send usTo labor for thy sake.

O great and triune God, as you have sustained them, sustain us; as you moved them, move us; as your love constrained them, rouse us with zeal untired. Light the beacon. Many of us are wood three times doused; flame the altar.

Two great lions stand in the street and block the way. The first is cowardice — an unwillingness to bear a costly witness. O Lord, help us to see the immeasurable gain on the other side of temporal loss. Let us see all that is at stake in our negligence and fear.

And Lord, stir us from the second lion, lethargy. Let us learn from the ant or from the foolish virgins or the cursed fig tree. Don’t let us drool upon our pillows undisturbed. Awaken the militant church dissatisfied with playing defense. Awaken the church whose witness is unmistakable, whose power is undeniable, whose advance the gates of hell cannot withstand. Awaken the church that so out-rejoices and out-loves the world that onlookers see it and must give you glory. Here we are, Lord; we will go. Send us forth on your errands to labor for your sake — but only as you go with us.

Church, we have a task unfinished that towers over your best life now. We will more fully taste the joy of our salvation as we go extend our hope to others.

Audio Transcript

Can we pray that God would teach someone a lesson? Can we pray for God to disrupt and make their life hard, all to get their attention? It’s an interesting question from Tiffany today.

“Pastor John, hello and thank you for the podcast. I know the Bible says to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I want to pray for God to change their heart and ways. But sometimes I want to pray that they are affected by their actions so they will wake up and change their ways. For example, at my job there is rampant negligence that has been brought to my boss’s attention multiple times. This negligence could seriously harm or kill someone. My boss doesn’t like the confrontation and doesn’t address the issue.

“Is it wrong to want them to be shaken up by some event to change their ways, or is praying that someone gets taught a lesson the same as saying, ‘I told you so’? Or is all of this unchristian to begin with? Psalm 73 comes to my mind and seems to check this kind of thinking. Immediate justice isn’t something that often happens, and we shouldn’t necessarily look for it to happen before Christ returns. But what do you think? Can we pray for someone to be taught a lesson?”

I start with the conviction from Jesus in Luke 6:28 that Christians are to “bless those who curse you [and] pray for those who abuse you.” So, I think it is right that we should seek the good of our enemies when we pray, especially the ultimate good: their salvation. So, if we pray that they be taught a lesson, we would be praying that the lesson would bless them, save them. That’s the principle. That’s the basic thing I would say. If you’re going to do it, do it savingly. It’s not an “I told you so” — it’s not a “Gotcha!” — but rather, “I want your ultimate blessing.” That’s what I’m seeking in my prayer.

But let me back up and put this question in a particular framework of what the Bible teaches about prayer. It was really helpful for me to think about this. Maybe it’ll be helpful for others. This question really is part of a larger question of how detailed our prayers should be when it comes to pleading with God to accomplish something in a particular way. In other words, if we have an ultimate outcome in mind that we want God to bring about, like saving a particular lost person, how detailed should we get in praying for God to do it in certain ways? Or to say it another way, how many secondary causes of a desired effect should we ask for?

Praying for Causes

Let me illustrate with a couple of pictures. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he began with the most general, all-inclusive prayer — namely, “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). So, this is a prayer that God would see to it that his name is honored, reverenced, treasured, glorified. “Do it Lord; cause that to happen.” And at that point in the prayer, he could have just stopped, right? He could have just stopped. “That covers everything, folks. If everything happens to the hallowing of my name, the glorifying of my name, the treasuring of my name, it’s over. That’s the end of the universe. That’s the point of everything.” He could have just stopped right there. The hallowing and the glorifying of God’s name is the ultimate goal of all things.

But he didn’t stop there. He tells us to pray some specifics underneath the hallowing of his name — namely, “Your kingdom come” and “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). So here are two specific secondary causes to the ultimate purpose of the hallowing of God’s name — that he would reign in people’s lives and over the earth, and that those lives would be obedient to his revealed will. And that would result in the hallowing of his name, the glorifying and honoring of his name.

“We may pray for others to be taught a lesson for their good, but we should be careful not to presume to be God.”

Then Paul gets even more specific in Romans 10:1, and he shows that we don’t merely just pray for the hallowing of his name or his reign in people’s lives or the doing of his will. We also pray that people be saved, be redeemed, be rescued from their sin. “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). So now we have several secondary causes prayed for: that God would reign in people’s lives, that they might be saved, that they might do his will on earth, that the hallowing of his name, the glorifying of his name, would come to pass.

But Paul and the Psalms take us into more specifics, more secondary causes. They pray — for example, in Ephesians 1:18 and Psalm 119:18 — that God would open people’s eyes to see wonderful things in the Bible. So, the New Testament saints did not just pray for people to be saved, but also prayed for what needed to be done for people to be saved — they have got to have their eyes open so that they can see the glories of Christ.

But Paul gets even more granular in his prayers and asks in 2 Thessalonians 3:1 that the word of God would run and be glorified. In other words, he’s not content to pray that people’s eyes would be opened, but that the word of God would in fact be effective in opening their eyes. So, he’s moving back down the causal chain here and asking God to act in producing certain secondary causes that bring about the ultimate thing he’s concerned about.

And Jesus takes this even a level below that in the causes that bring about such things. He says in Matthew 9:38, “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Now, these are the people who speak the word of the Lord, which will open people’s eyes, which will lead them to salvation, which will lead them to obedience, which will lead them to the hallowing of God’s name.

‘Teach Them a Lesson’?

So, you can see where this is going. I’m pointing out that the Bible does not simply teach us to pray for the ultimate end of things — like the glorifying of God’s name — and then stop. It teaches us to pray for layers of causes that the Bible itself reveals do in fact lead to the glorifying of God’s name. Which means that the question I’m being asked is, in effect, Is it biblical to pray that one of those causes, leading to the ultimate effect, would be, “Lord, teach this person a lesson in order to bring them to repentance and faith and obedience and the glorifying of your name”? Is that biblically warranted?

For example, say a person is making a practice of cheating on his income taxes, and he’s just not telling the whole truth to the IRS, and he won’t pay any attention to your rebukes. “You’ve seen it; you understand it; you’re telling me that’s not wrong. A Christian doesn’t act that way. It’s deceptive. Change your behavior.” And he doesn’t do it. He won’t repent. Should we not only pray that he come to repentance and leave the method by which he’s sinning, but should we pray that something happen to him in order to wake him up from his sinful way?

My answer is this: We may pray for particular ways for him to be taught a lesson for his good, but we should be humble and careful not to presume to be God and to know more than we do. The reason I say this is first because of Psalm 83:16. Here’s what it says — this is a prayer now — “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.” So, the psalmist doesn’t just pray that they would seek God’s face, but that they would be shamed for what they’re doing, and that that shame would bring them to seek God’s face. So, that’s a biblical example of praying that somebody be taught a lesson.

So, the basic answer is yes. But the reason I say we should be humble and careful not to presume to be God is that we don’t know what the best way is for God to bring a person to his senses and save him. We don’t know. We can guess. We can look at the Bible for pointers. But we’re not God. We should be careful not to tell God how he should do what’s best to do. If there are biblical pointers, then we can follow those pointers in praying for secondary causes, but I would not make a practice of going beyond Scripture and prescribing to God how he should accomplish his biblically revealed purposes.

“So, you’re a trauma surgeon! Tell me, what was your best case?”

Suddenly, the studio lights glared uncomfortably bright. Undoubtedly, the interviewer wanted me to offer him a flashy, adrenaline-fueled scene worthy of TV docudramas, a story stuffed to the brim with clickbait. But for those of us who toil in the wages of sin over the long years, rarely do these heart-pumping rescues linger at the forefront of our minds.

Rather, my first thoughts were the horrors: The young man who shouted, “Help me!” before he fell unconscious and died in the CT scanner. The woman, broken with grief, who crawled into her dying daughter’s ICU bed to hold her one last time. The paraplegic father whose anguish over the sudden death of his son so wrecked him that he howled and pitched forward out of his wheelchair onto the floor.

When I offered the interviewer the truth, his enthusiasm fizzled before my eyes, and he changed the subject. I forced a smile, swallowed down the tightness in my throat, and struggled against the tide of grief that’s become as familiar and worn as a tattered coat. It’s a mantle common to many who walk beside the hurting — the heaviness that presses upon the heart when we’ve witnessed others’ suffering over and over and over.

Burden of Caregiving

In whatever avenue they serve — in chaplaincy, military service, health care, counseling, or simply loving friendship — Christian caregivers often share a similar heart, viewing mercy as fundamental to following Jesus. What more poignant way to fulfill the call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God than to come alongside others during their darkest hours (Micah 6:8)? How better to love a neighbor as ourselves than to dedicate the work of our hands to uplifting the downtrodden and afflicted (Matthew 22:39)?

Yet when we “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15), our tears can linger long after our work at the bedside or on the battlefield has finished. When we bear another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2) in the hospital, overseas, or in a dying loved one’s home, our shoulders can ache long after our service has ended. Suffering leaves a mark, and in ministry that uniquely seeks to love the hurting, we bear those marks repeatedly.

In fact, when we have a front-row seat to the wages of sin, we can start to question God’s goodness and sovereignty. Is he really in control when so many suffer? Does he really love us? How do we carry on when the suffering we witness steals all hope and breath? How do we lavish others with the healing word of Christ when our own wounds still sting?

Four Truths to Guard Your Heart

When ministering to the hurting, harboring God’s word in your heart is essential. The following four reminders from Scripture can equip caregivers to face repeated suffering with grace and perseverance so they might continue to show the love of Christ when their own hearts ache with weariness.

1. You are not alone.

Just as my interviewer couldn’t comprehend the tragedies I’d seen, so also few fully understand the suffering caregivers witness in their day-to-day ministry. In Moral Warriors, Moral Wounds, retired Navy chaplain Wollom Jensen reflects upon this phenomenon: “I know what it is to live with fear; to be appalled by the loss of human life; to be shamed by the experience of participating in war; and the feeling of having lost one’s youth in ways that those who have not been to war will never be able to understand” (2).

And yet, as isolated as we may feel in our experiences of suffering, the truth is that in Christ we are never alone. Jesus was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” He bore our afflictions and carried our sufferings (Isaiah 53:3–4). As the author of Hebrews writes, “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” (Hebrews 4:15).

“Revel in the joy, the hope, the assurance we have in Christ that, when he returns, death shall be no more.”

God’s one and only Son — the Word who was with the Father when he stirred the heavens into existence — took on flesh, dwelt among us, and endured the same agonies and wounds that so trouble us. Most magnificent of all, Christ bore such suffering for us (Isaiah 53:4–5). He bore our burdens, knows our tears, and has journeyed through the shadowy valley. Astonishingly, he walks with us even now. “Behold,” he has promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

2. God works through suffering.

The Bible overflows with examples of God working through our trials to bring about what is beautiful, good, and right (Romans 8:28). Remember Joseph, who endured assault, enslavement, and exile at the hands of his treacherous brothers, but who saw God at work in it all. “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Genesis 50:20).

Consider John 11, when Jesus delayed in going to the bedside of his dying friend Lazarus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Martha lamented (John 11:21). And yet, his delay served a stunning purpose: to draw dozens of the lost to himself (John 11:42, 45).

Most of all, consider the cross. God worked through his Son’s agony and death to accomplish the greatest feat in all of history — the redemption of fallen sinners and the restoration of God’s people to himself as his adopted children (John 3:16; 1 John 3:1).

If God could work good through sorrows as deep as these, then surely he can do the same in our own sorrows — however piercing, however confusing, however long-lasting.

3. God invites you into his rest.

When working in the fields of heartbreak, the grave responsibility of caregiving can overwhelm us. In such moments, opening our hands to Jesus brings relief. Remember, we are not saviors. We are laborers in the harvest, but salvation comes through Christ alone, and any good we effect is through his will, not our own (Ephesians 2:10).

God is the Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, worthy of all praise; we, on the other hand, are fallen, finite, and weak. We are not enough. When we acknowledge our frailty and confess our failings before God, his grace increases all the more: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Turn over your grief to the Lord. Come to him earnestly in heartfelt prayer. “[Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Remember Jesus’s invitation: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30).

4. Death is swallowed up in victory.

A dear friend and sister in Christ, for whom I served as caregiver for five years, recently fell asleep in Jesus. As I held her hand, felt her pulse become thready, and watched her breathing slow as her earthly life waned, a thought recurred in my mind: this is precisely why Jesus came. To liberate us from these shackles. To save us, in stunning grace, from the wages of our sins (Romans 6:23).

The gospel shatters death’s hold on us. Jesus has swallowed up death in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54). He endured the cross so we might endure our own death. He rose from the tomb so that we, too, will rise. Death shall be no more. In this fallen, broken world, trials will afflict us, but Christ has overcome (John 16:33).

When Death Is Done

“So we do not lose heart,” Paul writes, reflecting upon the gospel.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)

My brothers and sisters, when you sit beside the dying and come alongside the grieving, when you seek to share the gospel in dark places, allow the light of Christ to embolden and guide you. The things that are seen and transient wither before the blinding Light of the world. Let that light illuminate your mind. Let his word guide your path. Revel in the joy, the hope, the assurance we have in Christ that, when he returns, “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore,” for the former things will have passed away (Revelation 21:4).

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

When someone turns from self to Christ, he trades not only sin for righteousness, hell for heaven, and despair for living hope. He also trades a small life for a large life — a life as large as the world Christ came to redeem.

The transformation takes time, of course. But in the end, the Spirit-filled soul cannot rest satisfied with self, nor with the affairs of his own kin and city and nation. No, as surely as all nations will one day bow to Christ, so Christ is moving his people to care about all nations.

Have you known Christians whose life seems marked by such largeness — Christians who live for places beyond here, times beyond now, and tribes beyond mine? Their eyes seem fixed on distant frontiers where Christ has not been named (Romans 15:20). They watch, fascinated, as the promise of redemption advances to “the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Their heart beats for the day when a better flood than Noah’s will prevail upon the world — when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).

They are, in a word, world Christians.

What Is a World Christian?

“World Christians,” David Bryant writes, “are day-to-day disciples for whom Christ and his global cause have become the integrating, overriding priority” (In the Gap, 6). Or as D.A. Carson puts it, “they see themselves first and foremost as citizens of the heavenly kingdom” and are therefore “single-minded and sacrificial when it comes to the paramount mandate to evangelize and make disciples” (The Cross and Christian Ministry, 117). World Christians may not personally go to faraway nations (though many do), but faraway nations have gone into them. They send, pray, dream, give, support, and worship like disciples of a worldwide Lord.

And we could use more of them. Our churches today do not have too many world Christians. We do not have too many among us overzealous for cross-cultural missions. We do not have too many who regularly remind us of unreached and unengaged peoples, those for whom Jesus is a strange sound. We do not have too many who plead in our prayer meetings, “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!” (Psalm 57:5).

Personally, I can remember seasons when I was more of a world Christian than I am now. Maybe you can too. Or maybe your heart has yet to feel the thrill of Christ’s worldwide dominion. Either way, many of us need a fresh wind from that Spirit who ever blows toward the Christless corners of the earth. And perhaps we might feel that wind if we consider some early disciples who formed what we might consider the first world-Christian church: the church of Christ at Antioch. In four marks, these believers display the nature and joy of the world-Christian life.

1. World Relationships

By the eleventh chapter of Acts, the gospel has begun to spread beyond the Jews. The Spirit has fallen on Cornelius and his household in response to Peter’s preaching; God has made common Gentiles clean through faith (Acts 10:15, 44–48). But we have not yet seen a world-Christian church, a true fellowship of nations, until some “men of Cyprus and Cyrene” come to Antioch and speak not just to the Jews but “to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus” — resulting in “a great number” of Jesus-worshiping Gentiles (Acts 11:20–21).

For the first time, Jews and Gentiles ate together, prayed together, ministered together, and worshiped together in the same local assembly and on the same spiritual footing. Soon, this church in Antioch would become a missionary-sending base (Acts 13:2–3). But before they sought to spread world Christianity abroad, they lived world Christianity at home. Their world Christianity was first a matter of world relationships, world friendships, world partnerships with local neighbors.

“As surely as all nations will one day bow to Christ, so Christ is moving his people to care about all nations.”

And so with us. Some today may live in an all-but monocultural, monoethnic place (in a small rural town, perhaps), but most of us can find something of the world without going far — often without even leaving our church. Even in my own relatively small church, I’m likely to sit near someone of Haitian, Bahamian, or Russian background on any given Sunday. Perhaps the first question for our own world Christianity, then, is not whether we’re willing to cross an ocean for Christ, but whether we’ll cross an aisle for him.

Will we embrace whatever differences lie between us and seek — by welcome, warmth, hospitality, friendship — to take our fellowship deeper than formalities? Will we cultivate a love for God’s global glory by embracing Christ-centered local diversity? And will we sincerely pray that our church would look a little more like a kingdom of all peoples? World Christianity, like so many other parts of the Christian life, begins at home.

2. World Responsibility

Bryant, in another description of world Christians, speaks not only of caring about God’s global glory, but also of accepting “personal responsibility” to see that glory go forth (In the Gap, 35). World Christians hear the Great Commission as if personally addressed, as if they too were on the Galilean mountain. They live as if the words “disciple all nations” were meant for them.

The Antioch Christians’ world responsibility appears most clearly in their missionary going and sending. In two other ways, however, we see just how sincerely they took this responsibility for God’s global kingdom.

First, when the church in Antioch heard about a financial need among the saints in Judea (some three hundred miles south of them), “the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief” (Acts 11:29). Distant news was not a distant care to these Christians, not when it concerned “the brothers” who had supported this church in its infancy by sending them Barnabas (Acts 11:22). Partnership in the gospel collapsed the distance and compelled them to give.

Do we, like them, care deeply about the faraway news of God’s kingdom, especially among our partners in the gospel? Do we treat missionary newsletters as more important than national headlines? And do needs there inspire prayer and generosity here because of the world responsibility we feel?

Second, Antioch not only sent missionaries (as we’ll see below), but they also took seriously the responsibility to support missionaries. If the apostle Paul had a home church, Antioch was it. From Antioch he sailed, and to Antioch he returned — not just once (Acts 14:27–28) or twice (Acts 15:35) but three times (Acts 18:22–23). It was a place he enjoyed spending “no little time” (Acts 14:28). And when he returned, he was not a no-name missionary, barely remembered by the church (“Who was that guy again?”), but a precious partner sent with fasting, sustained with prayer, and received with joy. In Antioch, Paul found a ready audience to hear “all that God had done” (Acts 14:27).

World Christians embrace God’s global mission as part of their calling, part of their personal responsibility. Like civilians in wartime, they do not treat lightly news from the front or the soldiers who come home.

3. World Readiness

When the Holy Spirit moved among the Antioch Christians and said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2), we read of no hesitation or resistance: “After fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off” (Acts 13:3). Can you imagine sending Paul and Barnabas away from your church — Paul, the mighty apostle, and Barnabas, the son of encouragement? For a whole year these men had “met with the church and taught a great many people” (Acts 11:26). But now the Spirit said, “Send them.” And so they did. Antioch was ready.

World Christianity, if embraced deeply, will disrupt some of our dearest relationships. The Spirit will send away our family and friends — indeed, he will ask us to send them away. Or he may send us ourselves, bidding us to be the ones who depart. Either way, world Christianity calls for readiness to send and be sent, even if, as Paul said of Onesimus, we feel like we’re “sending [our] very heart” (Philemon 12).

If two of your best friends, or two of your church’s best leaders, sensed a stirring to go, would you encourage them? If you sensed a stirring yourself, even if in a seemingly crucial ministry position, would you be willing to take the next step? Significantly, Luke notes that the Spirit’s commission came “while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting” (Acts 13:2). Only such a Godward posture can give us the world readiness we need. The Lord Jesus can make up for every loss we incur in his cause, whether by sending or going — and even give a hundredfold more (Matthew 19:29). But readiness for such losses will depend on keeping his fullness before our eyes.

4. World Resolve

Sometime after Paul’s first missionary journey, as he and Barnabas were ministering in Antioch again, “some men came down from Judea” with a teaching that threatened the world-Christian movement: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). In other words, faith in Jesus is not enough for Gentiles to be justified before God; they must also live under Jewish law.

But Antioch wouldn’t buy it. Not only did Paul and Barnabas have “no small dissension and debate” with the Judaizing teachers, but the whole church “appointed [them] to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question” (Acts 15:2–3). These believers would not give up the gospel so easily. They had been taught Christ too well. More than that, they had tasted and seen the goodness of God’s global purposes and would not build again “the dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14). To their relationships, responsibility, and readiness, they added world resolve.

We too have need for such resolve. Even if our world Christianity faces few theological distortions, it faces many practical distractions. We may not be tempted to force circumcision on the nations, but we are likely tempted to forget the nations — and to forget the joy that comes from living for God’s global cause. Our attention is too embattled, our pull toward the here and now too strong, our flesh too in love with the familiar for our world Christianity to remain without resolve.

Perhaps one of the most crucial steps we could take, then, is to embrace habits that keep the nations before our eyes. Read missionary biographies. Befriend believers who make the Great Commission a practical priority. Visit parts of your city filled with neighbors from other nations. Have meals with missions-minded brothers or sisters in your church. Treat missionary newsletters as precious prompts for family devotions and corporate prayer. And along the way, pray that God would make his global glory the passion of your heart.

Because when someone turns from self to Christ, he trades not only sin for righteousness, hell for heaven, and despair for living hope. He also trades a small life for a large life — a life as large as the world Christ came to redeem.

When I’m crying out, “How long, O Lord?” my pain has already outlasted my patience. I want deliverance — now. Today. To me, “How long, O Lord?” means “Lord, this trial has outstayed its welcome. Please fix it and restore me right away.”

Maybe you’ve felt that way too.

Yet even when our suffering feels endless, God knows exactly how long it will really last. It has an end date, an exact day and time predetermined by God. My pain will not last forever; it is not random or indeterminate. God has fixed all the details of this trial and will give me everything I need to endure it.

No Longer Than Necessary

The truth that all my suffering has an end date buoyed me years ago, when my life was in turmoil. Every day, the weight of my problems seemed heavier; tears would well up without warning. I saw no way out, and I wondered how much longer the pain would continue — and whether I could hold out until then.

Then one day I heard a speaker on the radio quote Warren Wiersbe, who said, “When God puts his own people into the furnace, he keeps his eye on the clock and his hand on the thermostat. He knows how long and how much” (Bible Exposition Commentary, 3:51).

God knows how long and how much. Those words brought indescribable relief. He knew how intense the furnace was, and he knew when relief would come. The furnace wouldn’t be hotter or longer than was necessary.

Every Minute Is His

Throughout Scripture, we see God predetermine the length of his people’s suffering. Before Abraham had children, God told him that his offspring would be enslaved in a foreign land, “afflicted for four hundred years” (Genesis 15:13), after which we know God delivered the Israelites through Moses. God told Jeremiah that the Israelites would serve the king of Babylon for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11), and then a remnant was brought back. Jesus told the church of Smyrna that they would have ten days of tribulation, but not to fear their suffering (Revelation 2:10). In each case, the adversity was both necessary and purposeful.

We often think of time so differently, certain that if God has promised to deliver us, it should happen right away. Perhaps people in the Bible felt that way too: Abraham waited 25 years for Isaac, Moses waited 40 years in the wilderness, David waited 15 years before becoming king. God’s timetable rarely coincides with ours.

Yet even when our deliverance seems slow, we can be certain that it is not delayed. Our rescue will not and cannot be too late, for every minute of our suffering has been appointed (Habakkuk 2:3).

In Pain on Purpose

Recognizing that our suffering is for a limited time, and that it is necessary, has radically shifted my perspective while in pain. Knowing there is a purpose, a purpose intended for my good (Romans 8:28), has helped me to endure the hardest of days. My faith will be purer, stronger, and more genuine after going through the fire, and that benefit will carry into heaven, resulting in praise, honor, and glory (1 Peter 1:6–7; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Romans 8:18). My suffering will not be wasted.

And every detail is known to God, who has predetermined how far each trial will go and every blessing I will gain as a result. As Charles Spurgeon said,

In all sickness, the Lord saith to the waves of pain, “Hitherto shall ye go, but no further.” His fixed purpose is not the destruction, but the instruction of his people.

The limit is encouragingly comprehensive. The God of providence has limited the time, manner, intensity, repetition, and effects of all our sicknesses; each throb is decreed, each sleepless hour predestinated, each relapse ordained, each depression of spirit foreknown, and each sanctifying result eternally purposed. Nothing great or small escapes the ordaining hand of him who numbers the hairs of our head.

This limit is wisely adjusted to our strength, to the end designed, and to the grace apportioned. . . . The limit is tenderly appointed. The knife of the heavenly Surgeon never cuts deeper than is absolutely necessary. (Morning and Evening, August 17)

In Christ, the waves of our pain have a limit, a boundary that God has set. And the pain itself is purposed for our gain, to teach us and to bless us. While suffering hardly feels anything like a blessing in the moment, knowing that every ounce of my pain has been predetermined and weighed, adjusted to my strength, tenderly appointed and absolutely necessary, has helped me withstand it. Though I do not and cannot know all the reasons that my suffering has been necessary, I can trust that every trial is working for my benefit.

There Is Still Today

Though we know that the end is already determined, and each morning brings us one day closer to that end, there is still today, looming ahead with pain and suffering. How do we make it through today?

First, we can remember that God will prove himself far better than we fear; he will do far more in this trial than we can imagine. There will be blessings along the way — every single day, without exception — and God will give us comfort and signs of his love. We just need to look for them.

Then we can resolve to live one day at a time — to stop thinking about tomorrow and the difficulties it may bring, to stop anticipating tomorrow’s struggles, wondering how we will manage. Today’s troubles are enough. Tomorrow may bring incredible deliverance, a reversal of our pain and loss. Our fears and worries could be needless, as God may give us miraculous rescue.

“Even when our deliverance seems slow, we can be certain that it is not delayed.”

Or tomorrow may bring deeper suffering and, with it, deeper grace. Either could be true, as none of us knows what tomorrow will bring. What we have is today. God gives us grace for today. God provides for our needs today. God grants strength for today. And he will continue to give us the strength that we need, just as he has promised: “As your days, so shall your strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25). Nothing we endure can outlast or outstrip the grace of God.

Hunt for Grace

After all, his grace surrounds us even now, even as we suffer. Philip B. Power, a pastor in the 1800s whose public ministry was cut short due to ill health, said,

God will not send trial without the intention of blessing; therefore, where the trial is great, we may be sure that the blessing intended is great also. If the trial were to be allowed to lengthen itself out beyond the possibility of fruit bearing, it would become simply an evil, an objectless infliction. Therefore, say to yourself, “This day’s trial could not be spared. God has still further blessing in store for me.” (A Book of Comfort for Those in Sickness, 80)

Look for the blessing. Look for God’s hand. Look for his comfort. They are all there. We can be certain that even when we’re overwhelmed and crying out for relief, God has something wonderful in store for us. He will not leave us desolate in our suffering — ever. He brings new mercies every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). We may not know what the day will bring, but we do know that it will bring God’s comfort and presence. It cannot but be so.

So, if you are feeling overwhelmed by your suffering, crying out to God, “How long, O Lord?” be assured that he knows exactly how long. He will not let you suffer one minute beyond what is necessary and never delays his deliverance for you. God is never cruel.

And today, in your suffering, God’s grace will give you everything you need to endure it, as well as perfectly timed blessings in your endurance. You may not know when your pain will end, but you can be assured that the end has already been appointed, and the result will always be for your good.

Audio Transcript

We’re now about a dozen years into the podcast — or eleven and a half years of podcasting, to be more exact. We have talked a lot about work over those years. We have talked about career building and finding our vocational calling, how to glorify God at work, and on the issues of when to leave a job and how to avoid overworking and idolizing a career, and issues of laziness and personal productivity, and how you define all those things — many huge issues now covered, and I tried to write those up into a digest in the Ask Pastor John book on pages 67–94 if you want to see the ground that we’ve covered.

In that section, and in this podcast, we’ve also taken up the question of what vocations are worthy of the Christian and which ones are not worthy of the Christian. A marketer at Nike once emailed in to ask if his job marketing luxury goods to people who don’t need them but want them — was that life vain? You might remember that episode, APJ 1519. That comes to my mind.

We’re back on a similar topic in today’s question from an anonymous man. “Hello, Pastor John! I am a building contractor. And in my region recently I was asked to join up with a construction partner I have worked with before, and one I really like and enjoy working with, to help complete one of their own projects. The project is a Mormon temple. Is this out of the question for a Christian who leads a construction crew to consider working on such a project like a temple like this, or even a mosque or casino or other things like that? How should I think through making this moral decision on behalf of the crew I lead?”

Probably I should start where I’m going to end — namely, by saying that this is the kind of question that has enough layers of ambiguity that I should not be dogmatic but admit that good Christians believing the same Bible may come to different conclusions. There are just so many aspects to take into consideration. But having said that, let me spell out maybe four or five principles or thoughts that I hope will give some guidance to the consciences of God’s people.

Ethics in Light of Eternity

The first thing I feel constrained to say is that believing in the reality of hell the way Jesus does — and he’s more explicit on this in the Bible than anybody — gives a kind of seriousness to most questions, especially questions like this. It just makes things so serious, and I mention this because Christians who keep the reality of hell out of their minds and sometimes are not even sure they believe in it — those folks simply won’t feel the weight that I feel in answering a question like this. Because when I think of a question like this, one of the questions I ask is this: Is this building that I’m working on going to be devoted to beliefs and activities that lead to eternal destruction?

Some people don’t even raise that question in trying to do ethics. I’m asking the eternal question about what becomes of human beings when they participate in what this building is for. A person who doesn’t think about hell just won’t take it that seriously, and therefore the question doesn’t have the same weight that it does for me. That’s the first thing I think I should draw attention to.

Many Works of Darkness

The second thing would be to draw attention to the fact that there are many more applications for the ethical issue at stake here than just building a Mormon religious house. What about building an abortion clinic for Planned Parenthood? What about building a mosque for Muslims? What about building a brothel in a red-light district? What about building a casino in northern Minnesota that you know is going to soak the meager savings of many poor people and continually divert their attention away from a healthy, productive life?

“If you don’t know what the building is for, you are probably not guilty for doing a good job in building it.”

What about building a room in somebody’s attic without taking out a permit, so that they can avoid fees from the city? What about building a meeting space for the central committee of the political party that makes child killing and homosexual behavior a matter of celebration? What about building a bar and a nightclub that includes striptease performances? What about providing fixtures, doors, countertops, lights, tile for any of those structures?

And the list goes on and on. So, this question has a much broader relevance and layers of complexity than one might think.

Incidental and Integral Evil

Another thing to take into account here is the degree to which the structure you’re working on not only will be the place where evil happens, but also the place designed and intended for evil to happen. That’s the purpose of the structure. Evil is not incidental here, but integral. Now, hardly any building anywhere is free from evil, right? I mean, you can’t build anything where evil’s not going to happen. Evil happens everywhere in every structure.

So, the morally relevant question when it comes to participation in the building of structure is whether that’s the intention of the structure; that’s the reason it exists.

Degrees of Responsibility

Here’s another factor to take into account: To what degree does the person involved in building the structure know what is involved in it, know what the intention is? Or to say it differently, given what a person knows — a builder knows, a construction worker knows, a provider knows — how clearly and substantially does his work add to the construction of the structure he disapproves of?

Now, that’s complicated. Let me illustrate. If you work in a factory that makes windows — we have got a big one in Minnesota here — you may have no awareness at all as you do your work in that factory that some of these windows are being sold to a mosque or a casino or an abortion clinic. It’s just not in your mind at all as you go to work every day and make a window. The causal connection between your daily work and the purposes of those structures is so remote that I think it is of little moral significance.

Your part is so remote that there is little moral connection between them. Your part in the window factory is not going to be seen as morally implicated by the evil purposes of the buildings down the economic chain, far out of your sight, than if it were part of what you’re immediately intending to help construct.

How Much Do You Know?

The principle that is most explicit in the Bible, I think, and most helpful in all of this, is in 1 Corinthians 10:27–28, which may not sound like a building text. Listen carefully:

If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience.

In other words, if you don’t know that the food involves you in the support of a pagan ritual, you can eat it. But if you do know that this pagan ritual is what the host intends, you won’t eat it. So, whether you eat or you don’t eat depends on whether you know what the eating signifies about the false religion.

It seems to me that this same principle applies to building something that is devoted to a false, destructive religion or lifestyle. So, if you don’t know what the building is for, you are probably not guilty for doing a good job in building it. You’re just doing the job to the glory of Christ as best you can. But if you know that you are involved in promoting a destructive religion or practice, then your participation may well be wrong. In fact, my inclination would be to encourage the Christian builder and construction worker or provider not to be part of a building that is widely known to be explicitly anti-Christian.

Building Wisely

So, I’m going to end where I began. In general, I want to encourage builders and workers not to contribute to structures devoted to anti-Christian beliefs and practices. But I realize that the complexities of various situations are such that we should be very careful not to pass judgment on a brother’s effort to make a biblically informed, conscientious decision.