ABSTRACT: Ten years after the English Parliament published the Westminster Confession, a group of Reformed ministers, including John Owen and Thomas Goodwin, met to draft a new confession: the 1658 Savoy Declaration. Using Westminster as their guide, they honed and clarified doctrinal statements and also attached thirty articles on congregational polity. Unlike the original draft of Westminster, however, they did not include polity within the confession itself, convinced that such matters should be left to Christian liberty. In doing so, Savoy not only improved upon Westminster but also took a stand that speaks a timely word to Christians today.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Michael Lawrence (PhD, University of Cambridge), lead pastor of Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon, to tell the story of the 1658 Savoy Declaration.

On October 14, 1658, Thomas Goodwin and a deputation of English congregational ministers presented a confession of faith and church order to the new Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard. Known to history as the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order, it has been both neglected and misunderstood. On the one hand, with the demise of Richard’s Protectorate six months later, the instability of successive parliaments in 1659–1660, and the restoration of both Charles II in 1660 and the Church of England in 1662, whatever import was intended by its authors was quickly overtaken by events. On the other hand, from the beginning, its detractors, Presbyterian and radical alike, sought to marginalize the declaration as a narrow attempt to either enforce congregationalism or interfere with liberty of conscience.

But in fact, the Savoy Declaration should probably be considered “the high water mark of English Calvinism.”1 That the authors attached a clear and convincing explanation of congregational polity was a bonus that would not be lost on Baptists, who would use this document as a basis for their own confessions in 1677 and 1682.

Ripe for Reform

The story of the Savoy Declaration is part of the long and tortured attempt to “settle” the church of England as a thoroughly Protestant and Calvinist church. While Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) had accomplished much after Henry VIII’s break with Rome through the Thirty-Nine Articles, many thought the church but “halfly-reformed.” Under Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, Puritans in both church and government had agitated and worked for more biblical forms of church government and worship. At the same time, Reformed theology continued to refine its understanding of the import of the covenants, the significance of the federal headship of Christ in the believer’s justification, and the dangers of both Arminianism and Amyraldianism. The Thirty-Nine Articles were ripe for both theological and ecclesiological reform, but Puritan hopes were repeatedly dashed and blocked by their Tudor monarchs.

Their first real chance at further institutional reform came when the Long Parliament summoned the Westminster Assembly of Divines in June 1643. What began as a “minor tweaking” of the Thirty-Nine Articles would become, for a variety of political and theological reasons, a completely “new confessional statement.”2 What we know today as the Westminster Confession of Faith, together with its Larger and Shorter Catechisms, is considered by some to be the pinnacle of confessional standards in the English language. But the English certainly didn’t think that at the time. When Parliament finally published the confession in 1648 (without formally adopting it), they omitted the two chapters that would have established a presbyterian form of church government, and they also made other changes related to marriage, the magistrate, and the conscience.3 Clearly, more work needed to be done if agreement on a new foundation for the church was to be established.

Among the Assembly’s major conflicts were disagreements over both the church’s polity and the role of the government in relation to the church. While the Erastians saw the church as part of the government, and the Presbyterians understood the church to stand alongside the government (and ultimately over it, since the king could be excommunicated!), a group known as “the Dissenting Brethren argued for a middle way.”4 These early congregationalists included Thomas Goodwin, William Bridge, Sydrach Simpson, and Philip Nye. While they were unsuccessful in their arguments at the Assembly, it would be this group, with the addition of John Owen, who would continue to press for church reform.

Assembly at Savoy Palace

With the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1649, the Church of England ceased to exist, but the churches of England remained. Functioning presbyteries existed in and around London and Lancashire County. Congregational and Baptist churches were throughout the land. Some parish churches continued as if nothing had happened. Other groups effectively became a church within a church, depending on the convictions of their pastor. And a host of sects, radicals, and heresies burst into view, not least the Quakers and the anti-Trinitarian Socinians.

Amid this confusion, the Dissenting Brethren were part of repeated attempts to provide these churches, and the nation, with both a structure and a confession that could unite the “godly” and protect against error. Goodwin, president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Owen, vice-chancellor of Oxford, collaborated with other leading clergy to produce a series of foundational confessional documents, beginning with The Principles of Christian Religion (1652) and The New Confession (1654). The documents were meant to serve as the basis for approving or rejecting ministers, while at the same time leaving room for liberty of conscience concerning lesser matters and allowing for a diversity of church polity. While fairly broad at first, as time went on and heresy and disorder multiplied, each successive confession became more exact in its doctrinal definitions and more Calvinist in its formulations.5

The last of these confessional efforts was The Savoy Declaration (1658). Unlike the first two, this was the work of congregational ministers alone. Spearheaded by Philip Nye with Cromwell’s approval, around two hundred divines gathered at the Savoy Palace in London from September 29 to October 12. While the bulk of the company dealt with various complaints and cases, a committee composed of Goodwin, Owen, Nye, Bridge, William Greenhill, and Joseph Caryl — all Westminster Assembly alumni except for Owen — drew up the articles of confession.6 But they did not start from scratch. On the first day of the assembly, the body decided to start with the Westminster Confession of Faith, as published by Parliament in 1648, and revise from there. Each morning, the committee would present its work to the larger synod for debate and approval.7 In addition to the confession, they also put forward a “Church-order” consisting of thirty articles outlining congregational polity, the roles and limits of voluntary associations of churches, and the relationship to other true churches that are not congregational.8

It may be tempting to interpret the Savoy Declaration as a grab for power and an attempt to impose congregational polity on the nation. But that would be a mistake. Without doubt, the statement on church polity is “denominational” in its argument for congregationalism.9 Oliver Cromwell died before the synod was done, and his son Richard, who received the deputation, was sympathetic to the Presbyterians. Considering shifting political winds, there was need to make a case for their inclusion. But it’s also clear that the Savoyans viewed their statement on polity as secondary. In the preface, often attributed to Owen but more likely written by the committee, they state,

We have endeavoured throughout, to hold to such Truths in this our Confession, as are more properly termed matters of Faith; and what is of Church-order, we dispose in certain Propositions by it self. To this course we are led by the example of the Honourable Houses of Parliament, observing what was established, and what omitted by them in that Confession the Assembly presented to them. Who thought it not convenient to have matters of Discipline and Church-Government put into a Confession of Faith, especially such particulars thereof, as then were, and still are controverted and under dispute by men Orthodox and sound in Faith.10

“Unity in faith is as much a work of God as faith itself.”

They then reference the two chapters on presbyterian government, as well as matters pertaining to marriage, divorce, and the magistrate. As they observed, while most people had the copy of the Westminster Confession published in Presbyterian Scotland, they were following the Confession “approved and passed” by the Parliament in England.11

Improving Westminster

In what ways does the Savoy Declaration improve upon Westminster such that it deserves to be called “the high water mark of English Calvinism”? To begin with, the entire confession is explicitly framed within a developed covenantal framework that reflects the maturing thought of Reformed theologians. The fall is explicitly explained within the context of a “Covenant of Works and Life” as opposed to merely the permissive will of God in Westminster.12 The covenant of redemption between the Son and the Father is made the explicit basis for the mediatorial work of Christ in chapter 8.13 The most notable addition is chapter 20, “Of the Gospel, and of the extent of the Grace thereof.” There is nothing comparable to it in Westminster. It begins,

The Covenant of Works being broken by sin, and made unprofitable unto life, God was pleased to give unto the Elect the promise of Christ, the seed of the woman, as the means of calling them, and begetting in them Faith and Repentance: in this promise the Gospel, as to the substance of it, was revealed, and was therein effectual for the conversion and salvation of sinners.

Finally, in chapter 21, “the whole Legal administration of the Covenant of Grace,” described as a “yoak,” is removed in the liberty bought by Christ.14 While some of this is implicit in Westminster, and the structure of the covenants is explained in chapter 7, Savoy thinks about redemption in more nuanced and developed terms of covenant theology.

Savoy also takes sides in controversies Westminster sidestepped. In chapter 11, our justification is accomplished by the imputation of not only the “obedience and satisfaction of Christ,” but of “Christ’s active obedience unto the whole Law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness.” Far from being afraid that the imputation of Christ’s active obedience might encourage antinomianism, Savoy makes it the ground of our faith. In the same chapter, Christ’s death is explained explicitly as a penal substitutionary sacrifice, rather than merely as making “satisfaction.”15 And while not coming down as infralapsarian or supralapsarian, Savoy goes out of its way to place the fall squarely within the eternal decree rather than God’s general providence.16

Throughout, the Declaration never misses a chance to make explicit the effectual call of God, the inability of man, and the priority of union with Christ. It also underlines that the “Doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our Communion with God, and comfortable Dependence upon him.”17 In these final small additions, Savoy is not correcting or improving Westminster, but “obviating some erroneous opinion, that have been more broadly and boldly here of late maintained by the Asserters, then in former times.”18

Guarding Christian Liberty

In all of these revisions and additions, we can see the influence of John Owen and Thomas Goodwin. Owen championed the imputation of Christ’s active and passive obedience for our justification, refuting both the Socinians and Richard Baxter in Vindiciae Evangelicae. Goodwin delighted in exploring the superiority of Christ the Mediator, rooted in the covenant of redemption.19 Owen and Goodwin together represent English scholastic Calvinism at its finest, exalting God’s glory in his sovereign work of salvation.

Both men were also congregationalists, evident not only in Savoy’s appended Church-order, but in the careful reworking of chapter 24, which corresponds to chapter 23 in Westminster, “Of the Civil Magistrate.” It’s in this chapter that their middle way between the Erastians and Presbyterians is evident. Westminster gave the magistrate authority “that unity and peace be preserved in the Church,” “that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed,” “all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented,” “and all the ordinances of God duly . . . observed.”20 As a result, while the government was ultimately subject to the church through its discipline, the government was also responsible to establish the church and enforce conformity. In contrast, while Savoy agrees that the magistrate has a responsibility to promote and protect the gospel, and to prevent the publishing and promotion of heresies and errors that “subvert . . . the faith, and inevitably destroy . . . the souls of them that receive them,”

Yet in such difference about the Doctrines of the Gospel, or ways of the worship of God, as may befall men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation [i.e., way of life], and holding the foundation, not disturbing others in their ways or worship that differ from them; there is no warrant for the Magistrate under the Gospel to abridge them of their liberty.21

The preface explains the motivation for this change. “There being nothing that tends more to heighten dissentings among Brethren, then to determine and adopt the matter of their difference, under so high a title, as to be an Article of our Faith.”22

The drafters of Savoy believed that their understanding of the government and order of the church was “the Order which Christ himself hath appointed to be observed.”23 They were not pragmatists. They were not following their preferences. They believed that to act otherwise was to sin against Christ. Nevertheless, they also understood that these and other matters were not part of “the foundation” of the faith. And so, while they wanted the magistrate to promote and protect godly religion, they also wanted to protect the liberty of a believer’s conscience from the magistrate and from themselves.

Against Imposition

That liberty reveals one of the most important legacies of the Savoy Declaration. These strict congregational ministers, articulating “the high water mark of English Calvinism,” were concerned first and foremost with what they called “experimental religion,” or what we would call “experiential religion.” They understood the importance of right doctrine and biblical polity. But they also understood that unity in faith is as much a work of God as faith itself. Human imposition, whether by government or church authority, has no place.

In our own day, when some Christians would be tempted to wield the power of government to enforce a more Christian society, we would do well to listen to those who wielded such power in their own. “Whatever is of force or constraint in matters of this nature causeth them to degenerate from the name and nature of Confessions, and turns them from being Confessions of Faith, into exactions and impositions of Faith.”24 Surely that is a timely word for us today.

Do you remember your first conscious “favorite song” as a child? Maybe it was a single, or an album, or a specific artist.

I remember hearing a particular song on the radio as a four- or five-year-old and saying out loud to my parents, “That’s my favorite song.”

Now, I realize I’m one of the older people in the room. So, I’ll ask, but I don’t expect many to raise a hand. Does anyone know the name Larnelle Harris?

Hands down, gospel singer Larnelle Harris was my first favorite singer. In January of 1985, Larnelle released an album called “I’ve Just Seen Jesus,” and the first song on the cassette was called “How Excellent Is Thy Name.” I loved that song.

The reason I mention Larnelle is that two years later, in 1987, he released another album, and tucked away fifth on the cassette was a song based on Philippians 3 called “I Want to Know Christ.” Still today, this song moves me deeply. Something about this song captured my six-year-old heart. I could tell its subject matter was unsurpassed. A song about “knowing Christ” felt so much bigger than your standard-fare Christian music of the 80s — or any decade. It went so clearly to the very heart of what God made us for.

I’ll read you the chorus, and you can hear our text this morning, as well as the “pressing on” we’ll look at next week in verses 12–14:

I want to know ChristI keep Him before meI lift up my eyesI drink in His gloryI press toward the goalHis goodness unfoldsMarch on, O my soulI want to knowI want to know Christ

Deep, Personal Knowing

At the end of the sermon last Sunday, Jonathan set the table so well for us for today. In fact, I hope this message will simply flesh out what he said near the end — that Philippians 3 doesn’t just want us to be right with God (which is penultimate) but to know Jesus. Knowing Christ is the final goal, the ultimate goal; it’s what makes heaven to be heaven:

Jesus is not just the means to get you what you want, but Jesus also becomes what you want. Jesus is means and end. To know Jesus is of surpassing worth. That is what is most valuable — to know “Christ Jesus my Lord.” . . . This is a deep, personal knowing. It’s real experience in real relationship. Intimacy.

I see three pieces here that map onto what we might call a (kind of) past aspect in verse 9, and a present aspect in verse 10, and a future aspect in verse 11.

So, here’s how we’ll proceed this morning: we’ll start by rehearsing what we saw last week in verse 9 (the penultimate), then jump to verse 11 and the future, and then come back to verse 10 and linger over what it means to “know Christ,” even now in this life, in the present. I hope to shoot as straight as I can about what it means to know Christ, and what that experience is like, and how we go about seeking to know him and enjoy him in our everyday Christian lives.

So, we start with the penultimate in verse 9.

1. We are fully accepted by God in Jesus.

I’m not sure we used the word “justification” in the last two weeks, but this is the reality we’ve been talking about. Verse 3 mentions “boasting in Christ Jesus” and “putting no confidence in the flesh.” This is justification talk. It raises the question, What is the grounds of your right-standing with God, your acceptance before God? How can an unrighteous sinner get right, and stay right, with the righteous, holy God?

Justification is God’s declaration over sinners like us, “You are righteous in my sight. I declare you to be in the right with me, fully accepted in my presence.” How? Not because of anything we’ve done to deserve God’s favor. But rather, because of what Jesus has done to win for us God’s favor and the verdict “Righteous!”

Start back in verse 7, and get the flow of thought into verse 9:

Whatever gain I had [and remember his amazing list of Jewish gains in verses 5–6], I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Three pieces here help us get clarity on this justification by faith alone.

First, what is not the grounds of Paul’s justification, and ours, before God: our own merit. He says, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.” The problem is not the law; it is holy, righteous, and good. The problem is us. We are sinners through and through. We are not holy, righteous, and good, and so even our very best efforts at obeying God’s holy, righteous, and good law cannot win his righteous favor and get us right with him.

Second, then, what is the grounds of our justification? Answer: having the righteousness that “comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Faith in whom? Faith in Christ. Righteousness from whom? Righteousness from God, through our believing in Jesus.

But still, one piece is missing, and it’s easy to overlook, at the beginning of verse 9: “found in him.” This is relational language, and it’s part of an interaction or an exchange. Paul has been talking about gaining Christ, getting Christ, and now he talks about Christ getting him, his being found in Christ. It’s almost like, “I am my beloved’s, and he is mine,” from the Song of Solomon. I get Christ because he got me.

Which means the ground of our justification is Christ alone, not our doing. And the instrument that connects us to Jesus is faith alone, again not our doing. And the context or the location of that faith is our being “found in him,” our being united to him, by the Spirit, through faith.

So, justification, in verse 9, is our being fully accepted by God in Christ. United to Jesus by faith, his righteousness is ours, and the Father’s full acceptance of him is ours.

Brothers and sisters, to know, really know, the grace of justification by faith alone will make you want to stand on your head for joy — and remember, verse 9 is penultimate. Justification is not the end. It’s not the final goal or reality. Justification, amazing as it is, is the means — the means to knowing the one in whom we are justified.

So, number one, we are fully accepted by God in Jesus. Now bounce ahead to verse 11 and the ultimate goal.

2. One day we will fully know Jesus and be satisfied in him forever.

That is, we will live forever, together, in ever-increasing bliss, in the unobstructed presence of and ever-deepening relationship with Jesus.

“Justification, amazing as it is, is the means to knowing the one in whom we are justified.”

We call this “glorification.” One day soon, when we see Jesus — the risen, glorified God-man — face-to-face, we too, like him, will be glorified. In that day, says verse 21, Jesus “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.”

Let’s read verse 10 to verse 11. As we’ve seen, Paul is celebrating being united to Christ by faith and declared righteous in him:

. . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

So, verse 11 speaks to a future reality: our attaining, our reaching, our arriving at, our coming to the resurrection from the dead. Just like Jesus rose again bodily to a new indestructible, risen, glorified body — the same temporal earthly body that went into the grave, then raised and transformed into an eternal heavenly body — so we too who are in Christ will one day rise again bodily to glorified, transfigured resurrection bodies.

And in these perfected, indestructible bodies, we will live eternally with Jesus, experiencing to the full the life God made us to live. We will have eternal life, which won’t only mean living in the same new world as the risen Christ, but it will mean knowing him. Union with him by faith now leads to communion with him forever. This, at its heart, is what eternal life is, like Jesus said in John 17:3:

This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Note two stunning moves in this statement: (1) Jesus puts knowing God at the heart of eternal life; then (2) he puts himself at the center of knowing God: “and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Remember the new-covenant prophecy that we saw in Hebrews 8, from Jeremiah 31, that “they shall all know me”? The coming of Jesus, God himself taking human flesh, dying for us, and rising again as the glorified God-man forever, is how God draws near to us that we might know him — “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

So, with Christ’s perfect work finished, justification by faith alone is the ground beneath our feet; and seeing him face-to-face is ahead of us, when we will be in the same space with the God-man — no distance, no obstructions, no remoteness, no more knowing in part but then knowing in full. But what about in the meantime? What about now, between our justification and glorification?

3. We know Jesus even now and want to know him more.

We’ve seen penultimate and ultimate, and so finally we come to “deep, personal knowing, real experience in real relationship,” even in this life. Verse 10:

. . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death . . .

What does it mean to know Jesus — not just know about him but know him, right now, the living Christ on the throne of heaven? Do you know him?

What does it mean to know Jesus, when, unlike his disciples, you’ve never seen him with your own eyes, or touched him with your own hands, or heard his human voice with your own ears? How do you know a person who is at present physically inaccessible? How can you know him?

One thing to make clear about Paul’s expressed desire “to know him” is that Paul is pressing way beyond minimal saving knowledge to maximal satisfying knowing. He’s not asking, What’s the least I need to know to be saved? Rather, he’s talking about maximally knowing and enjoying a real, living, breathing person, who has made himself knowable both as God and as man. This is maximal personal-knowing, not minimal information-knowing.

Struggle as we might to capture in words what it means to know Jesus, we all know experientially as persons what it’s like to know another living person. You don’t know a person simply by being in the same room. Two people can sit in silence in the doctor’s office waiting room and not know each other at all. Or two people thousands of miles away can know each other profoundly through the sequenced exchange of words. Shared space is not the essence of how we come to know each other, but interaction. Communication. Self-revelation. Exchanging words is typically the main channel through which persons know each other.

Our words reveal the unseen inner person, and so words heard and responded to in kind enable us to dialogue and interact and so know each other in and through the exchange. We come to know a person by listening to him and then, in the rhythms of relational interaction, speaking back to him with questions or our own self-revelation.

And don’t miss this: getting to know a person well also involves other people. You see more, and hear more, and know a person more by enjoying him with others. Other people draw out previously unknown aspects of the person. Also knowing someone deepens as you experience life with him, and especially life’s ups and downs, both triumphs and defeats.

As we get to know a living person, it often happens first in big chunks and then through endless refinements over time. You never exhaust knowing a living person. Yet over time we can genuinely say that we come to know a person’s heart, their essence, who they really are. So, when someone else talks about a person you know, “Yes, that’s him.” Or you might say, “No, I know him, and that doesn’t sound like him.”

And of course, Jesus is no ordinary person, so there’s a special note to strike here: vital to our knowing him, and coming to know him more, is something unique compared to every mere human person we know. Those whom Jesus knows, he puts in them his own Spirit. If you are in Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in you, and (as we’ve seen in Philippians 2:13 and 3:3) he is “the Spirit of Christ” (1:19). We hear Jesus’s voice in his word by the Spirit, and we pray to him in the Spirit, and we come together as his people through the Spirit. Which leads to Paul’s next phrase in verse 10.

Resurrection Power

What does it mean, then, to “know him and the power of his resurrection”? Jesus not only died in our place to forgive our sins; he rose again, and he is alive. He is alive to know, right now, as a living person, as the God-man seated on heaven’s throne, because of the power of the resurrection. So, to know the living Christ is to know him in the power of his resurrection.

But it also means to experience his resurrection power in our own person by his Spirit and be changed by him. It means to interact with him and so be transformed by him.

In knowing Christ, in being united to him and communing with him, his resurrection power doesn’t leave us unchanged. We are sanctified. We become more like him.

Which means in coming to know Christ better, in his holiness and grace, we also come to know ourselves better in our sin and need. Knowing Jesus has major life entailments. Knowing Jesus will change us. In fact, knowing Jesus is the engine of true Christian change. But — get this straight — we don’t change in order to know him; we know him and his resurrection power and so begin to change.

Knowing Christ transforms the fight against sin and our striving to be like him by putting it in the right perspective. When you know Christ and want to know him more, reading the Bible and meditating on Scripture is not a chore to be completed but a means of God’s grace in the pursuit of knowing Jesus more. Prayer is not a box to check, but speaking back to the one we know, in the power of his Spirit, having heard his voice in his word. And fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ becomes a precious corporate context in which to see and hear what fresh glories they bring out about Jesus in their words and prayers and obedience to him.

But we close with one more striking and unexpected means in verse 10 for how we know Jesus and come to know him more.

Fellowship of Sufferings

Look at verse 10 one last time:

. . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death . . .

Now, what we’ve said so far about knowing Christ is true, but the accent Paul adds here is suffering. How we come to know most deeply the risen Christ — his nearness, his pattern, his obedience, his holiness, his heart, his grace — is not in life’s easiest times and our most comfortable moments but in our sufferings.

What Paul has in mind here relates to what he’s just said about Christ’s example in chapter 2: “He humbled himself” (2:8). I don’t think that “becoming like him in his death” means that Paul anticipates a crucifixion for himself, or for us, but that he wants to know Christ by echoing Christ’s heart and “mind” (2:5):

[Being] in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. (2:6–8)

That’s the pattern Paul wants to be conformed to. He wants to know Christ by sharing in his sufferings, walking in the footsteps of his self-humbling, and experiencing Jesus’s help and fellowship and nearness and resurrection power on the path of obedience when it’s hardest.

We know Jesus not only as we walk with him in triumph but also — and typically all the more — as we cling to him in our suffering and find that he draws especially nearer to us in our suffering.

So, we might sum it up like this. There are two big parts to knowing him: Sunny days and stormy days. Bright days and dark days. Happy seasons and heavy seasons.

In the bright, sunny, happy seasons, we establish the steps of our lives. We learn to walk with him and get to know him as we walk with him. We cultivate habits for hearing his voice in his word by the Spirit and speaking to him in prayer in the fellowship of others who know him. Oh my, how vital are our fellows in Christ for knowing more of Jesus!

What we’re doing in those bright and sunny days is establishing trust and getting to know Jesus better so that when the rainy, stormy, dark, difficult days come, then we go especially deep with him. As many in this room know, it is often the times when we know him in our sufferings that we really know him best and come to know him more.

Supper Together

And we know him through eating with him at this Table. Here we know ourselves afresh as sinners, desperate, condemned apart from him. And we know his grace here — not just know about grace, but know grace, experience his grace. And through his grace, we know Christ himself.

So, while this Table is by no means the only practical avenue of knowing him, it is a vital one as we come here together week after week and eat and drink in faith. Which is why another name for the Lord’s Supper is Communion. We don’t just come here to eat and drink the grace he provides; we come here to encounter him. To know him.

Two men went up into the temple to worship. These men, however, unlike the two in Jesus’s parable (Luke 18:9–14), looked and sounded the same. Both lifted their hands in praise. Both sat silent beneath God’s word. Both bowed their heads in confession. And yet, only one of the men went down to his house justified. Only one was right with God.

Some may find this scenario troubling. If we cannot discern a person’s spiritual sincerity by his worship, then how can we discern it? If raised hands and attentive ears and a bent head can mask a hard heart, then where does true love for God appear?

The main answer comes in Jesus’s response to a certain lawyer. “Teacher,” the man asks, “which is the great commandment in the Law?” (Matthew 22:36). And Jesus, instead of responding with a single commandment, gives two:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37–39)

“Love God” is the first and greatest commandment, the crown of God’s good law. But such love never stands alone, Jesus says — nor is it chiefly known by outward acts of worship. Rather, love for God appears (or not) in how a person treats his neighbors. So, if you want to see someone’s spiritual sincerity more clearly, don’t mainly watch him in church. Watch him with his children. Watch him at work. Watch him in traffic. Watch him when offended. For you will know him by his neighbor-love.

Jesus’s Most-Quoted Verse

While the first and greatest commandment appears in the Shema — perhaps the most prominent Old Testament passage (Deuteronomy 6:5) — “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” may seem all but buried beneath the laws and ceremonies of Leviticus. But not to Jesus. Leviticus 19:18 became his most-quoted verse — and the most-quoted verse in the entire New Testament.

Why did Jesus repeatedly return to a passage we often rush through in Bible reading? For at least two reasons. First, Leviticus 19:18 summarizes, in remarkably compact form, the heart of God’s law as it relates to our relationships. As Paul would later write, “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments . . . are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Romans 13:8–9). Leviticus 19:18 is like the brief surfacing of an underground river that runs through the whole Old Testament, giving life to every law.

Yet Jesus returned to Leviticus 19:18 for another reason as well: perhaps more than anything else, neighbor-love reveals the sincerity of our religion. John Calvin notes how the first table of the Ten Commandments (relating to the love of God) “was usually either in the intention of the heart, or in ceremonies.” But, Calvin continues, “the intention of the heart did not show itself, and the hypocrites continually busied themselves with ceremonies.” Which is one reason why God gave the second table of the law (relating to love of neighbor), for “the works of love are such that through them we witness real righteousness” (Institutes, 2.8.52).

Here, in everyday interactions with family, friends, strangers, and enemies, the hidden heart appears. Hence, in the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus illustrates true spirituality not by religious ceremony (in which the priest and the Levite excelled) but by practical mercy (Luke 10:30–37). Without such mercy, the most scrupulous religious observance becomes the white paint on a coffin (Matthew 23:27). As Jesus said in another repeated quotation, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13; 12:7; quoting Hosea 6:6). Better to lend a hand on the side of the road than to arrive at the temple on time.

The spiritually dead can perform many religious ceremonies. They can gather with God’s people, pray long and often, memorize God’s laws, and tithe with precision. But they cannot love their neighbor as God requires.

Broader Neighbor, Deeper Love

At this point, however, we might ask, “Yes, neighbor-love reveals our spiritual sincerity, but can’t neighbor-love itself be feigned?” Indeed it can. Many Jews of Jesus’s day imagined they were obeying Leviticus 19:18 when they were actually obeying a command of their own making — a diminished and domesticated command more friendly to the flesh.

“Anyone can love lovely neighbors. But loving the hostile and the needy is a mark of Christlike grace.”

And so may we. The nineteenth-century preacher John Broadus notes how, precisely when we think we are loving our neighbors as ourselves, we may actually “be loving only [ourselves] — a kind of expanded selfishness” (quoted in Matthew, 160). Jesus often went to war with such “expanded selfishness.” He will not allow us to shrink neighbor-love to the level of unregenerate powers. Then and now, loving our neighbor as ourselves calls for something far beyond ourselves.

So, to stab us awake and send us running to God for mercy and help, Jesus not only tells us to love our neighbor, but he also reclaims the true meanings of neighbor and love.

Who Is My Neighbor?

When confronted with such a staggering command as “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” one of our first natural impulses is to narrow the meaning of neighbor to those who are easy to love.

The first time our Lord quotes Leviticus 19:18, he also quotes a popular addition to the command: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” (Matthew 5:43). Scour the Old Testament as we may, we will not land upon a command to hate our enemies (and we will find, to the contrary, commands such as Exodus 23:4–5). So, against the natural impulse to exclude enemies from the company of our neighbors, Jesus says, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).

Alongside enemies, the needy can easily be denied neighbor status, especially if those needy ones have no near relation to us. So, when a lawyer, “desiring to justify himself,” asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus has him picture a half-dead, stranded man, the kind of needy person who threatens to upend our schedule and empty our wallet (Luke 10:29–30). You may not know him; he may have no claim on you besides being a fellow human. But if you are near to him and able to help, then this needy one is your neighbor.

To assess the depth of our neighbor-love, then, we can ask who receives our regular care and attention. For whom do we pray (Matthew 5:44)? To whom do we “do good” (Luke 6:27)? And whom do we go out of our way to greet (Matthew 5:47)? Does the list include any enemies — those who offend us, provoke us, try us, wrong us, or simply ignore us? And does the list include any needy — the kind of people who disrupt your day and “cannot repay you” (Luke 14:14)?

If not, then our list of neighbors needs to grow. “For if you love those who love you,” Jesus asks us, “what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matthew 5:46). Anyone can love lovely neighbors. But loving the hostile and the needy is a mark of Christlike grace.

What Is Love?

Perhaps the lawyer’s question (“Who is my neighbor?”) is not our own. Perhaps we know neighbor spreads over our fellow humans whole, impartial as the sky. But what of love? Here as well, Jesus will not let us narrow the definition to something doable apart from him.

One of the most profound descriptions of true neighbor-love appears in what we know as the Golden Rule:

Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

“This is the Law and the Prophets” bears a striking resemblance to Matthew 22:40, where Jesus says that “all the Law and the Prophets” depend on the two great commandments — suggesting that the Golden Rule offers the gold standard for neighbor-love. And what a standard it offers.

Here we find an active, practical love, a love that goes beyond well-wishing to well-doing. Here we find an imaginative love that gives time and thought to what would truly benefit another. Here we find a self-denying love that serves others regardless of how they have served us. And here we find a broad, capacious love, one whose limits extend to “whatever you wish.” “Love your neighbor” pushes us further outward than we often go, bidding us to put our neighbors at the forefront of our consciousness rather than treating them as the background characters to the play starring me.

So, along with asking whom we love, we might ask how we love. Does our love regularly inconvenience us? Does it flow from a heart warm with desire for another’s welfare in Christ? Does it take shape in concrete action rather than remaining in the mouth or imagination? And for the task-oriented among us: Do our to-do lists include the varied needs of others, and not only our own?

He Neighbored Among Us

When Jesus commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, then, he tells us to love all our neighbors — including enemies and the needy. And he tells us to really love them — applying to them the measure of our self-love. Such love, however imperfect (and imperfect it will be till heaven), infallibly marks those who truly love God.

Yet if the first commandment becomes visible through the second, the second becomes possible only through the first. Jesus commands a deeper love than our fallen hearts can offer. He commands a love that comes from God — indeed, a love that comes from the very God who became our neighbor. Jesus, to show us this righteousness and to be for us this righteousness, came and neighbored among us.

In him, we see flawless neighbor-love unfold amid a demanding life. Here is one who loved the enemy and the outsider, who healed centurions’ sons and sought Samaritan sinners. Here is one who loved others as himself, allowing endless needs and persistent pleas to interrupt his days and infringe on his rest. Here is one who loved his neighbor even when that neighbor held a hammer and nails to his skin.

More than that, here is one who loved us — needier than a half-dead man on the roadside, more hostile than any enemy we’ve known. Only love such as his can bend our hearts away from religious formalism to obey the first commandment. And only love such as his can fill our hearts enough to obey the second. Loving our neighbors as ourselves flows from being loved by Jesus, deeply and daily.

“Let every Christian take up the duty of Christian love with tenfold seriousness,” the Scottish pastor Maurice Roberts once wrote. And let him do it by beholding Jesus with tenfold attention, devotion, and love.

Audio Transcript

We’ve talked a lot on the podcast about escaping a life of triviality, escaping this desire to be entertained to death. Twenty-five or so episodes in archive now prove that this is a major theme on the podcast, Pastor John. I summarized those episodes in the APJ book on pages 291–307. But here’s a unique question on the topic with a little twist, and it comes to us from an anonymous young man. “Hello, Pastor John!” he writes. “With your emphasis on Christian Hedonism, my question is about how you think of boredom. I often find myself wondering what it is exactly, and why God created the world with boredom as a main feature of daily life — at least in this age, post-fall. I’m not talking about depression, but the general ennui in this life, common to all of us.

“We stay busy with work and family and hobbies not to feel it. But it’s always there. A moment of downtime and it finds us again. Such boredom in this world seems to lead to all sorts of behaviors that Christians deem sinful: drug use, overindulging in smartphones and social media and entertainment and gaming, illicit relationships and affairs, gossiping and idle conversation. It has always puzzled me that God, at least in terms of his sovereignty over fallen man’s daily experience, has us experience a seemingly constant desire to be entertained or to otherwise ‘escape’ from reality by going to concerts, movies, playing board games, etc. At root, what is boredom? What causes it? What does it signify? And do you think God has a purpose in it for his children?”

I really enjoyed thinking about this question, partly because I’ve never thought about it before. I’ve never considered how the word (or the experience of) boredom is handled in the Bible. Isn’t that amazing? I don’t think I’ve ever asked myself that question until getting ready for this APJ. So I had never done a word search on boredom in the Bible, so this was not boring to me, which tells us something right away about the meaning of boredom — namely, it has to do with monotony. It has to do with dull repetitions that have no interest for us. So the reason thinking about boredom was not boring for me is because it was not monotonous or dull or repetitious. I’ve never done it before, and I wanted — and that’s a key word for non-boredom — to know what the Bible has to say.

And I’ll bet our listeners have already guessed what I found — namely, that word’s not in the Bible. Boredom is not. Boring and bored are not — except if you’re going to bore a hole through somebody’s ear. You can find the word boring, but it doesn’t have the meaning of this. So it’s interesting to me that the Bible doesn’t have the word boring, and it doesn’t have the word interesting anywhere in it. It doesn’t have the word exciting. It doesn’t have the word fascinating anywhere in it. (I’m basing that, by the way, on the ESV. There may be some other English translations I’m not aware of that might have some of those words, but not the ESV.)

Book of Boredom

Even though the word boredom is not found in the Bible, there is in the Bible a whole book devoted to boredom. It’s called Ecclesiastes. Listen to this:

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. . . . A generation goes, and a generation comes. . . . The sun rises, and the sun goes down. . . . The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind. . . . All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; . . . there they flow again. All things are full of weariness. (Ecclesiastes 1:2–8)

Now, that’s probably the closest thing you get to the word boredom: “All things are weariness.” “The eye is not satisfied” — there’s another good definition, I think, of boredom — “with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be . . . and there is nothing new under the sun. . . . I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:8–9, 14). That’s a very powerful description of a life that has sought non-boredom and didn’t find it under the sun — that is, without God.

Ecclesiastes is a book of what life is like if God is not the bright sun in our sky and his word is not the charter of our lives. And I think it’s in the Bible because the man who sent us this question is right. The experience of boredom is universal — not that everybody experiences it all the time, but everybody has tasted it. And he’s right also that, by its very nature, nobody likes it. Boredom by its very nature is unsatisfying. If you’re satisfied, you’re not bored.

And he’s also right that since nobody likes being bored, we all take steps — according to our personalities and our circumstances and beliefs — to get rid of it. If we’re super energetic, we might work ourselves out of boredom or play ourselves like crazy out of boredom to get rid of boredom. And if we’re more lethargic, then we may just sit on the couch, become a couch potato, turn the TV on and try to get rid of our boredom with movie after movie, streaming after streaming.

Why Are We Bored?

So he asks, “At root, what is boredom? What does it signify? Does God have a purpose in it for his children” — and I would add, for the world?

And my answer is that, at root, boredom is the relentless experience of not finding satisfaction in this world. Something starts out being exciting, satisfying, but soon we weary of it and we need something else. We take a vacation to the Alps, stand in awe for maybe two or three days, and before a week is over, the curtains are pulled and we’re sitting in front of the TV, trying to get the stimulus we’re not getting from the Alps anymore. Even great things can become boring for the fallen human heart.

What does it signify? What’s the meaning? What did God have in mind when he ordained the universal experience of boredom in a world of sin and rebellion against God? What’s his purpose for it? I’m going to give three answers: one from the Bible, one from C.S. Lewis, and one from the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert (my favorite, I think). And they’re all the same answer in different forms.

1. Eternity in Our Heart

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Now, I don’t know all that that verse means, but the least that it means, it seems to me, is that God plans for human beings to be frustrated with their experience in this world until they realize that they were made for God.

2. Made for Another World

Here’s the way C.S. Lewis says it: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world” (Mere Christianity, 136–37). Or to say it another way (paraphrasing Lewis), if we find that nothing in this world is a long-term solution to the problem of boredom, we were probably made for another world. Boredom points to God. That’s God’s purpose for boredom in this fallen world: to point us to another world — namely, to God and his infinitely interesting and infinitely satisfying person and work.

3. The Gift of Restlessness

Here’s the way one of the greatest English poets put it in a poem called “The Pulley.” And the reason it’s called “The Pulley” is because it attempts to describe in poetic form the way God pulls people to himself. And of course, the answer is that he pulls them through boredom. But he doesn’t use the word boredom; he uses the word restlessness. And he clearly thinks that God has made us restless or bored for a reason. So here’s the poem, and I’ll close with this:

     When God at first made man,Having a glass of blessings standing by,“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.Let the world’s riches, which disperséd lie,     Contract into a span.”

     So strength first made away;Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure.When almost all was out, God made a stay,Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,     Rest in the bottom lay.

     “For if I should,” said he,“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,He would adore my gifts instead of me;And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:     So both should losers be.

     “Yet let him keep the rest,But keep them with repining restlessness;Let him be rich and weary, that at least,If goodness lead him not, yet weariness     May toss him to my breast.”

Or we might say, “If goodness lead us not, yet boredom may toss us to God’s breast.”

I think that is God’s design in this universal experience of boredom: to point us to the origin of everything interesting, to the world where no one will ever be bored again — God’s presence through Jesus Christ.

Jesus didn’t die for men and women who might be saved. He died for men and women who will be saved. Right now, as you are reading these words, there are men and women — from your neighborhood to the nations — who have been purchased by the blood of Jesus. They may be hostile to the gospel, believe in a false god, or be spiritually seeking, but in the years to come, God will send beautiful feet to herald the good news of the gospel to them. They will be transferred from “the domain of darkness . . . to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).

God will do this, and he is inviting you and your church to participate in his plan. It’s like a cosmic take-your-kid-to-work day. Right now, at this very moment, there are persons and people groups who have no idea of the majesty of King Jesus but who, by the grace of God, will come to know and love him and spend eternity with us because of our obedience to “go into all the world” (Mark 16:15).

But how can pastors faithfully motivate our congregations to obey the call to go?

God’s Big Story

A thread runs through the Scriptures that you can’t unsee once you see it. To pull that thread in your preaching, teaching, and discipleship grows an awe for God, a love for the lost, and a zeal for the nations.

The thread starts at the beginning. God commands Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). The whole earth would be his, and we would be his viceroys. We would bring light and order to the world. But then Satan tries to cut the thread and steal the whole world for himself (Genesis 3). As sin enters the cosmos, it fractures everything; the universe is thrown into decay and subjected to futility. But God won’t finally relinquish a square inch of his creation to the enemy, so he sets into motion his plan to fill the earth with his glory. That plan includes all nations and peoples (Genesis 12:3).

God’s plan was always multiethnic, transcultural, and multilingual. He makes that purpose clear in the Abrahamic covenant, and we see it woven through the entirety of Scripture, culminating in the beautiful picture of men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation worshiping before the throne in a remade heaven and earth (Revelation 5:9–10; 21:24–26).

Throughout the Old Testament, we repeatedly see God’s heart for the nations. When Israel went up out of Egypt, “a mixed multitude also went up with them” (Exodus 12:38). Rahab, a Canaanite woman, became part of the people of Israel (Joshua 6:25). Ruth, a Moabitess, became Boaz’s husband, making King David the descendent of a foreign woman (Ruth 4:18–22). Examples abound of non-Israelites joining the people of God. Salvation would come through Israel, but it was never meant to terminate with Israel.

Jesus, God incarnate, reveals this plan more fully. He ministered to non-Israelites like the centurion (Matthew 8:5) and the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:26–30). He explained that he had “other sheep” not of the fold of Israel that he would save (John 10:16). And before he returned to heaven, he sent his disciples to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The storyline of God’s salvation is woven together with the nations. The command to go into all the world is God simply continuing his mission to gather his sons and daughters from afar.

Mobilizing Witnesses

So what is it that mobilizes people to join God in his mission? I’ve been the lead pastor of our church now for 21 years. We have sent a lot of people to the nations. I’ve discovered that building a sending church starts with faithfully preaching and teaching God’s story of redemption.

Tell the story.

In our preaching and teaching, we emphasize God’s big story as often as possible. When preaching through a book of the Bible, we try to help people understand its place and role in the Story.

We do the same in our discipleship. We have three core classes at our church: Christian Belief, Christian Story, and Christian Practice. Although Christian Story is the class that emphasizes the whole story, each one has the whole Bible as its framework, which roots hearers in a story bigger than themselves. This emphasis has come up repeatedly as we’ve talked to men and women from our church who have moved toward the nations.

Train toward the nations.

When mobilizing a church toward the nations, nomenclature matters. “Neighborhoods to nations” has become the phrase that helps our church understand what our hope is. Men and women who don’t know how to evangelize (or won’t evangelize) in their own neighborhoods will never consider the costly price of heading to a different place and culture. Those who have experienced the extravagant grace of God in being the conduit through which the gospel flows tend to be those who move toward the greatest need. We have made it a repeated priority to invite men and women to experience that grace through outreach training.

In outreach training, we don’t just train; we go out and do. Men and women learn tools and tactics. Then they head out to popular hangout places to pray with people, invite them to study the Bible, share the gospel, and build relationships. One recent outreach led to 134 people engaged spiritually, 87 who received prayer, 18 who heard the gospel, and one who said yes to Jesus. Each year, the people who engage in this training grow in courage, zeal, and belief that the arm of the Lord is not too short to save. Their zeal in worship, hatred for sin, and belief in the mission of God exponentially grow.

Aim young.

If you don’t know where to begin, I want to encourage you to aim young. This practice has produced some of the most fruit for us over the years. We want to educate, inform, and inspire the next generation and young families toward the opportunities that are ripe among the underreached and unreached. Our Vacation Bible School has almost always had a world focus. Each year, kids hear from missionaries, raise money for global projects, and pray for the work among our 100 Unreached People Group (UPG) cooperative (see more below).

We highlight this emphasis throughout the year in our children and youth programs as well. It is not uncommon for our missionaries to teach, explain, tell stories, and answer questions in our elementary program. As kids move into our middle-school and high-school departments, they can participate in short-term trips that grow in intensity and distance. This past year, a large group of high schoolers went to a closed country with a key partner and put on a sports camp among the predominantly Muslim population. They laughed with, played with, prayed with, and ministered among one of the world’s most unreached peoples. The energy and excitement it created among those students continue to encourage and embolden both them and their families.

We also send whole families on short-term trips. They get to go and see together how God can use their whole family as a means of grace to those who are far from him. Over the past two decades, we have discovered that young families with kids often have far more success meeting people and connecting with other cultures. No matter where you are in the world, everyone speaks the language of kids. I’m not taking away from the stunning global work singles and older saints do. But most of the cultures in the 10/40 window are high hospitality cultures, and kids get you in the door more quickly.

Build together.

About a decade ago, we shifted our mindset from being a church with missionaries to being a sending church. We still utilize key partners, but as a sending church we want to own a clear process that moves people from the neighborhood to the nations. After some significant prayer and consideration, we wanted to focus on the underreached and unreached in the world. Together with ten other churches and organizations, we started the 100 UPG cooperative. We are hoping, praying, resourcing, and believing that over the next couple of decades, God might use us to see one hundred unreached people groups have a gospel presence established.

That goal is way too big for one local church, but by prayerfully joining with other churches, we believe we have a real shot. Each church has established local pathways (neighborhoods) that begin that training at home. From there, they move to one of three hub locations around the world and join a team already at work before moving to the desired final location.

Pray and Preach

None of this happens without prayer. As we teach God’s big story, train in evangelism, aim young, form key partnerships, and dream big, we are praying for specific places, people, and opportunities to get the right people to the right place with the right training.

It doesn’t start overnight, either. If you want to build a sending church that aims to reach the nations, start by consistently preaching on the nations and the unreached. There is no substitute for the preacher who has the nations in his bones. Fan into flame your belief that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1).

Fathering four children under five is a pleasant way to learn to die. The lesson was compulsory. With each additional child grasping at the heel of the other, the space for “myself” went from overcrowded to overboard. As a general watches city by city fall, I have watched family needs (so many needs) steal over the walls and ransack what I used to know as free time, recreation, and sleep.

Fathers lay down their lives for their children. Anthony Esolen says they throw themselves away in hope.

The father throws himself away in hope, looking forward to the time when he will be no more on earth than a name or a rumor of a name but his children will be alive, and people will say of him — if they remember him at all — that he was a good man but his children are better. He hands on his old tools to his sons, tools shiny with the wear of his hands. (No Apologies, 105)

Fathering is a good investment, to be sure, but still an investment; a beautiful and fulfilling death, but still a death. Time, energy, resources withdraw from other relationships, other enterprises, even gospel enterprises — “the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided” (1 Corinthians 7:33–34). Children create more fractures. The good father throws himself away to the very ones who sometimes threaten to interfere with his higher unions, with both his wife and his God. He, as Esolen notes, is a creature that requires explanation.

Seed in the Ground

Fatherhood (and motherhood) can teach us much about the great paradox of following Christ: life through death. The whispered secret of life — the life we desperately hope for — comes only on the other side of the dying we squirm to avoid. To lie still as Isaac upon the altar, to die daily, to hate your life in this world for Christ’s sake leads to life with him beyond.

Fathering has dragged me deeper into the paradox. As I lay myself in the coffin for the other’s good (and ultimately for my own), as I close the lid on one dream after another in this world, I expect the call to rise and come forth in another. To explain this pattern of death begetting life, Jesus holds up a seed. Have we learned its lesson?

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24–25)

“He remains alone” (John 12:24). The preserved life, in the end, is the lonely life. Clutch and guard and caress your free time, your heart, your small loves and ambitions — fondle them, stroke them, and they will betray you in the end. Keep your life to yourself, and you will only have yourself. You will remain alone.

“Fathering is a good investment, to be sure, but still an investment; a beautiful and fulfilling death, but still a death.”

Do we not pity the woman holding her cat in a quiet room just a little too tightly? The man in his sixties without anything better to talk of than his football days? Cold becomes the flame of life lived for nothing higher than self. My kingdom come, my will be done is the shortest prayer to unhappiness. Beyond the television noise in his living room (so falsely named), the undead seed remains alone. He lives with his drawbridge raised to Christ, cannot give himself away, has no higher hope; his heart beats too fragile.

“But if it dies,” Jesus promises, “it bears much fruit.” The Christian life, the Christian father’s life, is a multiplied life. Something beautiful grows from repeated deaths in Christ — life eternal and a harvest of glory that could not have been otherwise.

Bones in the Ground

Allow me to offer another illustration. Of all Joseph’s amazing feats, here is the one that Hebrews highlights: “By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones” (Hebrews 11:22). This provides us another image of Christian fatherhood, a sacred act of Christian faith.

As we lay down our lives in love for Jesus, as we press past the body aches to wrestle with sons against dragons, as we sit to talk through our daughter’s day while noiseless burdens pound our thoughts, we sow in hope. We deposit our lives into Christ, who in turn directs us to pour out our lives into theirs, not as codependents, but as fathers. We find our true heartbeat doing what our flesh resists: denying ourselves, dying to carnal pleasures, sending our bones ahead into a land we will never enter.

We hope when our names are remembered — if they are remembered at all — those names inspire faith in all who whisper rumors about them. We pray that our bones, as Joseph’s bones, become an emblem of God’s promises and faithfulness. Though dead, he would speak. His bones whispered words of reminder that God would plant his people where he had promised. They were bound to be buried in a better country. John Calvin puts it beautifully in his commentary:

In ordering his bones to be exported, he had no regard to himself, as though his grave in the land of Canaan would be sweeter or better than in Egypt; but his only object was to sharpen the desire of his own nation, that they might more earnestly aspire after redemption; he wished also to strengthen their faith, so that they might confidently hope that they would be at length delivered.

Man of God, isn’t that what you want? Even after death, to sharpen the desire of the next generation to aspire more earnestly after Christ? If tomorrow should be your last day, what legacy will your bones leave? Have you been throwing your life away in hope — storing your life away in faith — for the good of your soul, your family, your church, your neighbors? If the Lord gives you five, ten, thirty more years of life, how do you wish to be remembered?

Upside-Down Meaning of Life

The hope of bounty following burial is not due to karma but Christ. This is his pattern. Because the Father and Son reign above, verses like Proverbs 11:24–25 are true:

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer;     another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.Whoever brings blessing will be enriched,     and one who waters will himself be watered.

The one gives freely and grows richer; the other clings to his coins and suffers poverty. Because of God, the one who blesses others will be blessed; the one watering — even the harvest he may never see — will be watered himself. The tree yields its fruit, and so its leaf does not wither. Die now, and you will reap thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold in this life and the life to come. Our self-denial is self-deposit; God will not be outgiven.

So, keep your life in this world — hold to it, hope in it, hunger for it — and to dust you shall return. Alone the seed remains. Alone the seed dies. And alone it weeps and gnashes its teeth.

But die. Die to this world. Die to preferring now above later, yourself above family, this life above the next. Die and keep dying this beautiful death, trusting Jesus — the great Seed who went before — and you, little seed, shall go the way of all flesh, but in due time, you will break through the ground to life and blossom in Day unending. Send your bones ahead of you, and you shall wake in the promised land. Throw yourself away on earth, and heaven gets returned to you.

On the other side of dying in Christ is life in Christ, a life overflowing with fruit, fellowship, fullness, and family, in the presence of the Father forever.

The phrase “Ten Commandments” does not appear in the New Testament. Not once. Which might be surprising for Gentile believers today who have been steeped in a Judeo-Christian heritage, and have come to adopt a distinctively Judeo way of thinking.

Travel through all the precious words and teachings we have in the New Testament — through the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, addressing such a variety of circumstances and needs — and Jesus and his inspired spokesmen never make the appeal that’s become instinctive for some Christians today: keep the Ten Commandments. If “obeying the Ten” were essential to Christian morality, or even an expressly important component of it, then Jesus and his men seem to have done us a great disservice. Imagine how differently the whole New Testament would read, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, if the Ten Commandments, as they appear in Exodus 20 (or Deuteronomy 5), were to be adopted as is into the lives of new-covenant Christians.

Moreover, the phrase “Ten Commandments” (or “Ten Words”) appears just three times in the Old Testament (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; 10:4), which might clue us in that the Ten have assumed a place in the minds of some that is not only foreign to the Christian aspect of our heritage but even the Judeo part.

Perfect Ten

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we find a few further references to the two “tablets” on which the Ten were written, but not much more — and not at the level of hermeneutical prominence we might assume. And when we turn to the New Testament, we find Paul stating, in very clear terms, that Christians as Christians do not live by these tablets, carved in letters on stone, but by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:3, 6–7; also Romans 2:27–29). He could hardly speak plainer than he does in Romans 7:6: “We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”

In such passages, the contrast between old and new appears so stark that we might ask, How could such a dramatic shift happen from Moses and the letter, to Christ and the Spirit? The short answer is that the climax of history came. Messiah himself, not only David’s son but the divine Son, came among us in fully human flesh and blood, taught and discipled, and died and rose again.

Jesus came to fulfill what “the old” anticipated and to usher in a new covenant and fundamentally new era of history. His followers would not be under the previous administration that had guarded God’s people since Moses. Jesus himself says he did not come to destroy the Law and Prophets, but to do something even more striking: fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). That is, fulfill like prophecy. Not simply keep the Ten in place, or remain under them, or leave them untouched, but fulfill them — first in his own person, and then by his Spirit in his church. He came not to cast off Moses, but to fulfill Jeremiah, and in doing so, he accomplished what is even more radical: establishing himself as the supreme authority, putting God’s law within his people (rather than on tablets), writing it on their hearts (rather than stone), and making all his people to know him (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

Because Jesus lived and taught at the climax of history, in this once-for-all transition from old to new, from the age of Israel to the age of the church, we need to carefully observe the fresh and sometimes subtle differences in emphasis in his ministry and teaching, and confirm our readings in the teachings of his apostles.

As a piece of this larger picture, let’s here take up the limited focus of how Jesus handles the Ten Commandments. Granted, he does not refer to them as a package called “the Ten Commandments,” but he does, at various key points in his teaching, refer to individual commands from the Ten, and so we get a sense of his larger orientation through pondering his various treatments.

1. But I Say to You (Commands 6, 7, and 9)

We turn first to the Sermon on the Mount and the so-called “six antitheses” of Matthew 5:21–48. This is Jesus’s most programmatic teaching related to commandments from the Ten, in the sweeping context of “the Law and the Prophets.”

Doubtlessly, Jesus’s early listeners could sense the winds of change in his message, as he taught “as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28–29). So, in his most celebrated sermon, Jesus clarifies that he has not come to destroy the old or jettison the commandments, per se. Rather, he has come to fulfill what the Law and Prophets have long anticipated, and that fulfillment in himself (as we’ll see) will bring a salvation-historical maturation and completion, not devolution.

In fact, Jesus’s new-covenant people will come to live with the help of such spiritual power that they all will surpass those who were considered the elites of the previous era: “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Jesus echoes this epochal development in the concluding claim of the antitheses: “You therefore must be perfect [complete, teleioi], as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The previous era embodied a real but modulated expression of God’s standards; the new will, in some sense, raise the standards (Matthew 5:31–32; 19:7–9; Mark 10:4–9; Luke 16:18) and provide far greater Help (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7).

Of the six antitheses that follow, the first four are tied to one of the Ten Commandments. First is command 6, “You shall not murder” (Matthew 5:21). The note Jesus strikes is not continuity but completion: “But I say to you [the I is emphatic] that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). Here, we might say, he escalates, deepens, or draws out of the negative command (“you shall not”) a timeless moral entailment that God’s own character enjoins on his creatures. Previously, God had expressed in a more accommodated form the moral implications of his character; now, with the coming of Christ, the standards of righteousness, anticipated by the law, come into full flower. And critically, Jesus does not draw it out by appealing to previous Scripture, but he declares it on his own authority: “I say to you.”

“Jesus neither bows to the law, nor burns it down, but draws attention to himself as the surpassing authority.”

Similarly, the second antithesis begins with command 7: “You shall not commit adultery.” Again, Jesus says, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). It may seem at this point that Jesus is simply “deepening” the law, but the remaining antitheses do not fit so easily into this pattern. In the third, he expounds the law: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you . . .” (Matthew 5:31–32).

Both “deepening” and “expounding” are inadequate descriptions of the fourth antithesis, which summarizes several Old Testament texts that expand command 9. Again he says, “But I say to you . . .” and in doing so, he “simply sweeps away the whole system of vows and oaths that was described and regulated in the Old Testament” (Douglas Moo, “The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses,” 349). The fifth and sixth antitheses cast the net even wider, showing that Jesus is prepared to speak with authority over a mixture of old-covenant law and popular interpretation in his day.

What emerges, then, is not a common principle for what Jesus is doing to old-covenant commands to put his followers under them, but the radical authority he claims for himself over both human traditions and old-covenant commandments alike. This is, after all, what Matthew reports (and teaches us) at the close of the Sermon:

When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. (7:28–29)

The scribes appeal to the authority of Scripture, but Jesus, daringly, asserts his own authority again and again. The key assertion is “I say to you.” The prevailing effect is Jesus’s new supremacy over all other commandments (“you have heard that it was said of old”), be they the seemingly authoritative maxims of the day or even the genuinely authoritative commands of God as expressed in the previous era.

By no means does the rise of Jesus’s authority mean the destruction of the old, such that Jesus’s followers are now turned loose to murder, commit adultery, and bear false witness. Rather, now, with the coming of Christ, he surpasses Moses and becomes the personal channel of God’s moral authority for his people in the new era and covenant. This he will declare climactically in the Great Commission, on the basis of his having “all authority,” and the standard of worldwide disciple-making being “all that I [not Moses!] have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18–20).

2. Out of the Heart (Commands 8 and 10)

In Mark 7, Jesus makes passing reference to commands 8 and 10 (along with 6, 7, and 9). In verses 1–13, he answers the challenge of the scribes about his disciples eating with unwashed hands and so not living “according to the tradition of the elders” (verse 5). After rebuking their “fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish [their] tradition” (verse 9), he gathers a wider audience to speak with his authority to a related issue:

Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. (Mark 7:14–15)

Related to the Ten, this is a double-edged sword. First, as Mark comments, Jesus thus “declared all foods clean” (verse 19), another astounding revelation of his authority, which, as the God-man’s, surpasses even the divine commands issued in the previous era. Second, Jesus clarifies, “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting [that is, commands 6, 7, 8, and 10], wickedness, deceit [command 9], sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (verses 21–22). Disobedience to commandments 6 through 10 — and eight other sins besides — reveals the unseen heart, which Jesus comes to address, convict, and transform.

The coming of Christ, with his supreme authority, brings the end of Israel’s peculiar food laws, but it does not undo the timeless standards of morality based on the character of God. In fact, now the inner person, “the heart of man,” comes more clearly in view as the source of full obedience to commandments 6 through 10, as well as in areas unaddressed by the Ten. And all this with Christ himself in the position of supreme Lawgiver, not as mere teacher of Moses.

3. The First and a Second (Commands 1 and 2)

We will look in vain for precisely commands 1 and 2 (Exodus 20:3–6) in the ministry of Jesus; however, we find him mentioning a “great and first commandment” and a “second.” Yet remarkably, Jesus goes outside the Ten when he makes such superlative claims.

During his Passion week, when a lawyer from among the Pharisees asks him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” Jesus replies not with Exodus 20 but Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37–40)

Relevant to our focus, Jesus does not elevate the Ten above the larger Torah, but actually, he elevates other parts of the Torah over the Ten! Jesus dares to make the interpretive judgment that Deuteronomy 6:5 represents God’s first and foremost requirement of his people, even better than the first commandment of the Ten. Then, on his own authority, to name the second as an obscurely placed Leviticus 19:18 really should make us shake our heads. Jesus thus demonstrates (1) a wholeness in his approach to the Torah, which does not elevate the Ten above the rest of Scripture, but actually (2) identifies the defining realities as best expressed elsewhere, and all this (3) on the basis of his own authority, not an exegetical argument based on Moses’s authority.

4. Live Long in the Land (Command 5)

Now we come to the first of the three individual commands that remain: command 5, “honor your father and your mother” — which comes not only with a promise, but also a specific context: “that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12).

This gives us an opportunity to recognize how plainly the Ten are embedded in a particular historical moment and generation: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). The Ten go on to mention male and female servants, livestock, sojourners, city gates, and your neighbor’s ox or donkey. Command 5 refers to “the land” to which these newly liberated slaves in the wilderness are heading: Canaan. To be sure, the applications to later periods of history are intuitive enough (as Paul demonstrates in Ephesians 6:1–3), but we still note that Exodus 20 is unapologetically embedded in a certain moment and does not pretend to be otherwise.

Command 5 also gives us the chance to revisit Jesus’s exchange with one of his most famous interlocutors: the rich young ruler. He approaches Jesus and asks, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). We expect Jesus to quickly correct the obvious error: a sinful human cannot secure eternal life with any good deed! Yet, like the antitheses in Matthew 5, Jesus turns the encounter masterfully toward his own person. First, explicitly: “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Then, implicitly: “There is only one who is good” (verse 17).

Then Jesus comes at the man’s error through commands 6, 7, 8, 9, and 5 — and through Leviticus 19:18 (verses 18–19). With shocking presumption, and perhaps endearing honesty, the man answers, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” (verse 20). Now Jesus circles back to where the exchange began, and the prevailing lesson of his Sermon on the Mount: me. “If you would be perfect [complete, teleios, same as 5:48], go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (verse 21). Jesus is the first and final answer to the man’s query, and to open his hand to take hold of Jesus, the rich young man must release his grasp on his many possessions.

Here Jesus shows the inadequacy of the commandments to save. The man claims to have kept all the commandments, but that is not sufficient. One thing he lacks: Jesus himself.

5. Hallowed Be His Name (Command 3)

Finding command 3 (“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” Exodus 20:7) in Jesus’s teaching seems difficult at first. No exact quotation appears, though we might see a connection to the fourth antithesis. But when we broaden our lens to Jesus’s concern with “the name of the Lord,” we find the associations pervasive. We are hard pressed to find many words more frequently on the lips of Jesus than name. Most memorable of all is the opening request of Jesus’s model prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).

Jesus clearly reverences the divine name, and in his life and ministry he not only “takes the name of the Lord” without vanity, but even fills it up completely in his own person. On Jesus, “the name” is not received as an empty shell, but filled with all the fullness of deity in full humanity. He is the first to take up the name without any vanity or lack whatsoever, and so, remarkably, he speaks not only of his Father’s name but also, inimitably, and even more often, of his own. He warns his disciples that they will leave “houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake” (19:29) and “will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (10:22; 24:9). “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (18:5), and “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (18:20). Examples could be multiplied from the Gospels, especially John.

Most provocatively, Jesus puts himself, as Son, alongside his Father and the Spirit, as sharing in the singular divine name in his Great Commission: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

6. Lord of the Sabbath (Command 4)

Finally, and most scandalously, is command 4: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8, including verses 9–11). Of the Ten, this one is most conspicuous in the tenor of its New Testament handling, including in the ministry of Jesus, as well as in the wrestling of the church for twenty centuries. Essentially, you will not find careful, reasonable Christian arguments in such tension with any of the other Ten in their central moral thrust. Many of us are eager to affirm a six-and-one principle in creation, even if command 4, in its Mosaic expression, is not binding on the new-covenant believer.

Here, we need not tackle the question “Should Christians Keep the Sabbath?,” addressed ably elsewhere. Instead, we emphasize the astonishing way in which Jesus handles command 4 and, like the antitheses and the Great Commission, freshly declares his supremacy over all that came before — and in the strongest terms of all.

Having just captured the beloved invitation, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden” (11:28), Matthew reports, “At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath . . .” (12:1). As Scott Hubbard observes, “The seventh day marks the setting of so many clashes between Jesus and the Pharisees that when we read something like, ‘Now it was a Sabbath day . . .’ (John 9:14), we expect trouble.” And so it begins.

The hungry disciples pluck and eat some heads of grain, and true to form, the Pharisees, while somehow keeping Sabbath themselves, are right there on the spot to register their disapproval: “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath” (12:2). Jesus replies magnificently at multiple levels. David’s men were exempt on the basis of their being with God’s anointed. So too, in the law itself (Numbers 28:9–10), “the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath” — performing a burnt offering every Saturday — “and are guiltless” (Matthew 12:5).

“Jesus is indeed Lord — Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all.”

Jesus then does what we now might have come to expect: he neither bows to the law, nor burns it down, but draws attention to himself as the surpassing authority. And he does so twice. Both are partially veiled expressions in the moment, and boldly conspicuous in retrospect. Verse 6: “I tell you [note that language again], something greater than the temple is here.” Verse 8: “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Far from Sabbath’s servant, or its saboteur, Jesus is its Lord. He is Lord of the temple, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all that came before (whether divine commands or human traditions), and all that will follow. And so, we see how his invitation in Matthew 11:28–30 leads smoothly into this episode “at that time” (12:1):

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Christ himself is and gives the climactic rest. Command 4, and commands 1 through 10, indeed all the Law and Prophets, prophesied (Matthew 11:13) of this greater one to come — greater than the temple, than David, than Solomon, than Jonah, and greater than Moses, the Sabbath, and the Ten.

Lord of All

Those of us raised with a heightened appreciation for the Ten, or perhaps with a diminished view of the rest of Scripture, and even Christ himself, may feel ourselves in moral freefall to first ponder the implications of Jesus’s lordship over the Ten. But the unsettled feeling passes quickly, and soon we find our feet, and moral stability, on even firmer ground, and our admiration for Jesus increased besides. And in that increase is our appreciation for Jesus’s authority and his words.

Jesus not only outshone the Pharisees in his understanding of Moses, but he himself generously issued commands, and commissioned his church “to observe all that I have commanded you.”

He is indeed Lord — Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all.

Audio Transcript

Several decades ago, preaching was defined as an act meant “to disturb the comfortable and to comfort the disturbed” (Campus Gods on Trial, 102). You’ve heard that definition before of preaching. Disturbing the comfortable remains one of the great challenges faced by the preacher and the evangelist and all of us who seek to share the gospel in the prosperous West today. Because to be comfortable in sin, apart from Christ, is the deadliest place to be.

With that concern comes this question from a listener named Matt. “Hello, Pastor John! As an evangelist, what have you done to try and convince people who have their material needs met of their need for Christ? I have a wealthy brother who has no interest in the gospel or spiritual matters. I’ve been praying for him for years to be saved and I just don’t know how to break through all the comforts of his life that make him feel confident and assured and safe.”

This question resonates deeply with me, not only because of people I know who are outwardly quite content and yet are lost, but also because my father was an evangelist who saw thousands of people come to Christ through his ministry, and he said to me when I was a boy, “Johnny, getting people saved through the gospel seems not to be the hardest thing in my ministry. But getting them lost so that they know they need to be saved — that’s the hardest thing.” So, this question is not new to me. It’s been around for a long time. I suspect it’s not unique to our time.

Alternative Gospels

The thing that this question is getting at is that most people do not feel any need for the most important thing that Jesus accomplished and offers. And add to that the tragedy that so many Christians, and even some preachers, in our day have altered the message of the gospel so that the main thing — the most important thing Jesus accomplished by dying and rising again — is not the most important thing being offered when people share the gospel. Rather, there’s a constant effort to make the message fit the felt need, which drastically alters the message from something infinite and ultimate and glorious and precious to something temporal and far less important.

The prosperity gospel, of course, is the most egregious example of this, as prosperity preachers try to sell Jesus as a kind of magical force in your life that will make things go better in this world. But there are less egregious forms of prosperity-gospel distortion, which do the same thing at a lesser level, that is pretty much infecting the American church. We create alterations of the gospel as we try to persuade people with our own seemingly innocuous version of the prosperity gospel — by mainly referring to the fact that your psychological state or your marriage or children or finances or health will improve if you accept Jesus.

Death and Judgment

Now, my father was a very happy man. He knew the wonderful effects of God’s forgiveness and justification by faith and the hope of eternal life. He knew the wonderful effects here and now of being a Christian. He was a happy, well-rounded, balanced Christian. I think that’s probably why I’m a Christian today. I never saw in my father or my mother any reason to jettison what they were so authentically changed by. My father wrote a little paperback. Most fundamentalists don’t write books like this — and he was one, a very happy one. I have it on my shelf: A Good Time and How to Have It.

And yet he also knew that most people thought they were having a good time and the gospel would just get in the way. That was the problem. That’s what he had to overcome. Therefore, what I remember most clearly in his preaching is the flame in his eyes of mingled kindness and severity when he quoted Hebrews 9:27: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Oh, I can just hear him say it. I can see the look on his face.

“At the bottom of all other problems is the problem that we are under the wrath of God.”

Sometimes we joke and say, “Well, two things are unavoidable in life: death and taxes.” Well, that’s not true. Taxes are avoidable. You can just go to jail. But there are two things that are unavoidable without Christ: death and judgment, death and hell. The main thing Jesus came into the world to accomplish was to make it possible for human beings, under the just sentence of death and hell, to escape that eternal condemnation and live forever, glorifying God by their happiness in him. That’s what he came to do — centrally at the bottom of all other things.

Solving Our Biggest Problem

What God sent Jesus into the world to do was to solve every human problem eventually. The problem that has to be solved at the bottom of all other problems is the problem that we are under the wrath of God. That’s humanity’s biggest problem. No matter how rich we are or happy we are — or healthy or famous or strong or beautiful — we are all sinners. We have belittled the glory of God by making so little of it, and we deserve eternal condemnation. Romans 5:9 says, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” And 1 Thessalonians 1:10 says, “[God] raised [Jesus] from the dead, . . . who delivers us from the wrath to come.” And Romans 2:5 says, “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”

This is the problem at the bottom, under all other problems, and this is the main problem for people who feel they have no problems and don’t need the gospel: the rich, the comfortable, the content; the poor, the comfortable, the content.

So, my father pleaded with healthy, wealthy, self-satisfied people to wake up and realize that every heartbeat could be your last, and you’re not ready to face an all-holy God. There’s only one way to be ready, and that is to be united to Jesus Christ by faith in him as our Savior and Lord and treasure. According to Romans 8:3, God condemned sin in Jesus Christ’s flesh. That is, he gave his Son to bear the condemnation of his own wrath for all who will trust him.

Or in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” My father would plead with people, “If you don’t accept the curse that Jesus came under God’s wrath against you to give, you will have to bear your own curse in hell.” That’s the one crucial message that our comfortable, oblivious friends and neighbors need to hear. There are many other good things to say; that dare not be neglected.

Warning with Wisdom and Love

We need to be deeply aware that this is a message of love about an act of love that is so great it cannot be exaggerated. Just before mentioning God’s wrath in Romans 5:9, Paul said, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is no greater love than that God would put his only Son through hell on the cross to save his enemies from going to hell. That’s the heart of the gospel.

So, Matt, let’s pray that God would give us tears and compassion, not just for the pains and sorrows of this life. Oh my goodness. You read the news of what’s happening around the world, and there is just so much suffering now. Yes, by all means let us weep for that, but also, may God give us tears for the pain-free people, the comfortable people, the healthy, wealthy people who are blind to what awaits them without Christ.

God will show you, Matt, when and how to give this message as you seek to lay down your life for others. He will. He’ll show you. I have seen such warnings — I mean severe, earnest, tearful warnings, from my father and in my own ministry — I have seen warnings from my father and from me bear the fruit of salvation. May God cause our love to abound with great wisdom so that we know how best to deliver this essential message.

If you could learn to preach from one man in particular, whom would you choose? Some may want to mention big names of today. Others may be entranced by great preachers of the past, the names that echo through history. Perhaps, closer to home, a dear mentor left a particular imprint upon us.

But what about the apostles, men full of the Holy Spirit, and their inspired sermons recorded in Scripture? Should we not learn from them first? In a delightful book called Peter: Eyewitness of His Majesty, my friend Ted Donnelly speaks of Peter as a disciple, as a preacher, and as a pastor. The book is a magnificent treatment of this servant of Christ. Some years before my friend himself passed into Christ’s presence, he preached on Acts 2 and identified some of the features of Peter’s preaching. I gladly acknowledge my debt in what follows.

What, then, can the record of apostolic preaching teach us? What lessons might we learn to help us declare the whole counsel of God? Turning to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:14–40), let me suggest seven features of apostolic preaching that we can and should pursue.

Peter manifestly preaches in the here and now, beginning with the striking assertion about the disciples’ sobriety (Acts 2:15). Peter preaches an immediately relevant sermon as a man who knows where and when he speaks, and with whom. His sermon proceeds from a real person and is to, about, and for real people — those in Jerusalem who crucified the Lord of glory. He focuses on the most important matters — salvation from sin through faith in the Christ who died and rose. The sermon is earthy, preached by a dying man to dying men, yes, but also by a living man to living men, about the man who lived, died, and lives again forever.

Do we preach with the same sense of immediacy, with the same sense of reality? Do our messages seem like history lectures, or are people made to feel that this sermon pours from a present me to a present you?

2. Scriptural and Reasonable

Peter moves from explanation to exposition to application to persuasion. He takes account of his hearers’ experience, but he uses Scripture to interpret, explain, and confirm it (as in 2 Peter 1:19). Dealing with what his congregation knows, sees, and hears, he turns to Joel 2 to explain the work of the Spirit, to Psalm 16 to emphasize the reality of the resurrection, to Psalm 110 to connect the ascension of Christ with the grant of the Spirit.

Again and again, Peter makes the point, “This is that! That is what it says, and this is what it means.” He is preaching like Christ, employing what I call an apostolic hermeneutic, which Christ patterned for his disciples in Luke 24:27 and 44–48. Does our preaching rest in and rely upon the word of God? Are we manifestly proclaimers and explainers of divine truth, and chiefly of Christ as he is set forth in all the Scriptures?

3. Doctrinal and Instructive

I doubt anyone has ever been asked to preach a distinctly Trinitarian sermon, blending the richest insights of biblical and systematic theology, and covering such topics as theology proper, Christology, pneumatology, prolegomena, anthropology, soteriology, sacramentology, eschatology, and ecclesiology. You might consider such a request ridiculous or even impossible. Yet I suggest that Peter manages it here!

All these notes resonate and combine at Pentecost. Peter introduces all of them naturally, accessibly, substantially, and forcefully — sermonically! Peter is a true theologian, and his sermon is the fruit of Christ’s instruction and the Spirit’s illumination. But he is also a true preacher: though well taught, he doesn’t feel the need to parade his learning. He is neither entertaining the goats nor straining the giraffes. He is calling and feeding the sheep, and therefore he both knows and shows his theology appropriately. His scholarship is not lofty and academic, but consecrated to save and sustain souls through the plainest of declarations.

Are we preaching meaty or milky sermons, according to the needs of our hearers? Good preaching sets forth doctrine sometimes centrally, sometimes incidentally, so that the truth comes across as deep, clear, and sweet to the congregation.

4. Christian and Adoring

Peter’s sermon is theologically rich, but it zeroes in on the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter’s sermons, like Paul’s and others recorded in the New Testament, are full of the Lord Jesus, overflowing with precious truth concerning him. The Pentecost sermon is ardently and urgently Christ-centered, Christ-focused, Christ-exalting. The prophets spoke of him; God sent him; we trust him. He who is God the Son is also identified as true man, the promised man, the sent man, the crucified man, the risen man, the ascended man, the exalted man, the gracious man, the saving man.

“Have we preached, will we preach, a gospel that is whole and holy, free and full, sweet and saving?”

Remember, Peter is preaching to people who knew the Old Testament and among whom Jesus of Nazareth had physically walked. If they needed such instruction, how much more do hearers today? People do not know, or even know about, Jesus of Nazareth. They need men who are urgent and ardent to tell them of the Savior. Are we as preachers going out to tell people about Jesus Christ? Are we eager for people to hear of him, or do we not believe that the preaching of Christ will prove God’s means of bringing sinners to faith?

5. Applied and Direct

“Men and brothers,” said Peter, “Let me speak freely . . .” (Acts 2:29 NKJV). And he meant it! Read through the sermon again. Peter is plain, open, bold, and courageous. He looks his congregation in the eye and speaks to them. He speaks with startling bluntness: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. . . . Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:23, 36).

This is not hectoring speech; nor is it unrighteously aggressive. We should expect the word of God to dig, to press, to probe, to trouble the soul, to cut to the heart. When the Spirit brings it home, hearers cry out, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). The seraphic Samuel Pearce pleaded,

Give me the preacher who opens the folds of my heart; who accuses me, convicts me, and condemns me before God; who loves my soul too well to suffer me to go on in sin, unreproved, through fear of giving me offence; who draws the line with accuracy, between the delusions of fancy, and the impressions of grace; who pursues me from one hiding place to another, until I am driven from every refuge of lies; who gives me no rest until he sees me, with unfeigned penitence, trembling at the feet of Jesus; and then, and not till then, soothes my anguish, wipes away my tears, and comforts me with the cordials of grace.

Do we expect such preaching? If necessary, will we seek it out? Do we as preachers express truth directly, or do we fudge and shave, blunting the edge of the Jerusalem blade? Do we expect and desire our preaching to provoke the question, “What shall we do?” or have we become experts in turning aside the thrust of divine truth?

6. Affectionate and Gracious

Peter’s most direct speech does not lack love. He speaks to them and toward them, for them (Acts 2:14, 21–22, 29, 38–39). He holds back neither the horror of sin nor the hope of salvation. These last days are gospel days! The good news is being proclaimed to all: repent and believe in Christ, and you shall be saved. (Matthew Henry delightfully calls this offer “a plank after shipwreck.”) Then be baptized, identifying yourself with the Jesus of Scripture, the Christ from Nazareth. Forgiveness will be granted, and the Holy Spirit, who is God himself, will dwell in you to purify you, to bless you, to keep you.

Do we know how to combine the straight and the sweet? Have we learned, under God, to wound and to bind up? Do we know and love the people before us and around us, and so speak? Have we preached, will we preach, a gospel that is whole and holy, free and full, sweet and saving? Have we received the Jesus who brings salvation, and do we delight to tell others of him?

7. Blessed and Fruitful

Peter’s sermon strikes home hard and deep. Those cut to the heart cry out, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And soon after, “those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:37, 41). Solemnity and scorn gave way to serious concern, and the Lord granted salvation to thousands. This sermon, preached by a man full of the Holy Spirit, instructed by the Savior and illuminated by the Helper, is a carrying out of the Great Commission. As Peter obeys the command of Christ, three thousand receive the word, are baptized, and so are added to the number of the believers (perhaps more than Christ saw in all the days of humiliation, if we so read John 14:12).

Do we not have the same gospel? Do we not have the same Savior? Do we not have the same Spirit? Can we not preach similar sermons? Can we not pray for and expect similar results? I mean not so much the great numbers (though neither do I dismiss them), but rather the same spiritual reality and heavenly force?

Here is a model for truly apostolic preaching, an example for those who follow in the faith and labor of the apostles. We are not apostles, but we can desire more of the apostolic spirit. In that sense, we can and should seek to preach apostolic sermons, not as cold constructs according to some dry standard, but as the products of burning hearts taken up with Christ and desiring, above all things, the glory of God in him, and the eternal good of all those who hear.

Today is the ninth anniversary of our wedding day, April 10, 2015. As I’ve thought back over these last nine years of God’s faithfulness and kindness to me and Faye in our marriage, a story came to mind about a particularly terrible fight we had. And that felt relevant for my assignment:
“wisdom in relationships.”

Our first year of marriage was hard. I don’t know if it was harder than yours or harder than most (because I’ve never been married to anyone else, much less to any of you). But it was hard. We fought way more than either of us expected. We were very in love and made lots of good memories too. But we were also very different and still deeply sinful. For my part, I was naive and selfish and not ready to lead her well.

On top of all that, she was from sunny, warm Los Angeles, and so she was now 1,900 painful miles away from everything and everyone she knew and loved. So we fought — a lot. And it came to a head that first fall. I knew how homesick she was, how much she missed her family and friends and the beach, and so I decided I would send her back to California — without me, less than six months into marriage. Already a bad idea.

I also decided to surprise her — an even worse idea. So, on the day of her flight, she thinks we’re just picking up friends from the airport, but when we pull up to baggage claim, I have her open the trunk — and there’s her luggage, already packed for her with a sign saying, “You’re going to California!” I even had my phone out to record just how happy she was.

She was not happy. As soon as she saw the sign, she said, “No, no, no, no, no . . .” through tears — lots of tears.

I said, “Oh no . . . you don’t have to go . . .” So, we got back in the car, and I started driving around the terminal. I figured she just needed more time to process what was happening. But she didn’t. She just got more sad and more angry: “Why do you keep driving in circles? You said I don’t have to go!” I decided to stop circling and parked in short-term parking — my 25th mistake so far (if you’re counting). By now, she’s had enough, so she says, “Alright, if you want me to go, then I’ll go!” She storms out of the car and into the airport — no bag, no boarding pass, no idea which airline or where to go.

I followed her into the terminal, now pleading with her to come back home with me. And then a police officer stops me. “Sir, you stand over there.” “No, officer, we’re really OK.” “Sir, stand over there. . . . Ma’am, is this man hurting you?” I’m thinking, here I am trying to bless my wife and send her on a nice trip to California, and I’m going to end up in jail tonight. And I’m supposed to lead small group in thirty minutes.

After further investigation, the officer decided I wasn’t a serious threat. Faye and I got back into the car, and we spent the night at home together. When she opened her luggage, she realized it was 60 percent bathing suits, and the rest were mostly dirty clothes — and no underwear (remember, this was our first year, and I didn’t have any sisters). That night, though, ended up being strangely sweet as Faye talked about all the reasons she didn’t want to leave me for the weekend, even for California — how this was her home now. And I talked about how much I just wanted to bless her and refresh her. We confessed, we forgave, and we went to God together.

Now, why do I share that story? Well, because I think it illustrates our desperate need for wisdom in relationships. Even at their best and most well-intentioned, relationships can be deeply confusing and painful. For one reason, we’re all sinful. I hate to be the one to tell you that, but you’re still sinful, which means you’re still hard to love at times. Maybe you’re being hard to love today. We’re also not God, so when it comes to these hard moments in relationships, we don’t know what he knows, and we can’t do what he does. And so, we constantly need wisdom, wisdom we do not have on our own.

Wisdom for Relationships

When President Tabb sent the invitation, I asked him if he had any particular kinds of relationships in mind. Did he want me to talk about dating? Or marriage? Or friendships? He replied, “You could reflect on lessons the book of James gives us for cultivating wise relationships with significant others, friends, church members, neighbors, extraterrestrials.” Okay, I added that last one. Basically, “Can you share any practical wisdom for whatever relationships matter most to each of us?”

I thought about the kinds of wisdom I need in relationships. I thought about the kinds of wisdom Faye and I have sought out from older, wiser believers. I thought about the kinds of questions younger friends in our church and community ask us. And so many of those questions — certainly not all of them, but so many of them — were rooted, one way or another, in conflict. How do I relate well to someone I love who’s driving me crazy right now?

“Fighting within and fighting with God spills over into fighting in marriage, friendships, churches, and workplaces.”

So, I walked slowly through James several times, on the lookout for especially practical help for the kind of conflict we all experience with those we love. (I couldn’t help but think mainly of my marriage, but the principles here really do apply to every other relationship we have — maybe even to aliens.) I made a list of twelve, which is way too many for chapel, so I tried to pare the list down to just the essential ones — and I ended up with eleven. So, I did another, more cutthroat pass and landed on five.

1. At the root of your conflict is conflict with God.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. (James 4:1–2)

Do you want to know why we fight with those we love? At its root, it’s because one or both of us want the wrong things. In that moment, we want something other than God more than God. Usually, we want something from God more than we want him. That’s what sin is. These are “passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). These desires start a war within us (which means we’re already at war with ourselves), but they also put us at war with God. And because we’re at war with ourselves and at war with God, those wars very often spark wars with others. Fighting within and fighting with God spills over into fighting in marriage, friendships, churches, and workplaces — and James says all of that hostility is rooted in wanting the wrong things. So, what should we want?

You know this: We should want God. We should count everything else as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. We should gladly lose anything else if that’s what it takes to gain Christ and be found in him (Philippians 3:8–9). So, when the fight comes, we might stop and ask,

What am I wanting so bad right now that’s not him?
What am I demanding that God hasn’t promised me yet?
If I really believed that in Christ all things are mine — this world and the next, life and death, the present and the future — how would I respond to this conflict?

We could ask James, then, What resolves quarrels and fights between us? What stops many of them before they even begin? A mutual treasuring of Jesus — when both of us desire him above all the things (and there are so many things) that might separate us and turn us against each other.

2. You won’t have wisdom if you don’t ask.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. (James 1:5)

If any of you lacks wisdom, it’s available to you. Think about that. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God . . . and it will be given him.” Some of you are nodding along, yes, of course. God gives wisdom; I know that. Others of you, though, aren’t so sure. You’re quietly desperate for wisdom right now, and I mean desperate. You’re stuck in some situation or with some decision, and you feel like you’re out of options. You feel like you’re in a dark, cold room feeling the walls for a way out. You know full well that you don’t know what to do next.

Listen to what James says here one more time: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God . . . and it will be given him.” It will be given to you. It might not be the wisdom that you wanted. And it may not come as quickly as you wanted it to come. But God promises you here that he won’t leave you in the dark in these relationships — if you ask.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God.” The only people who get wisdom are people humble enough to ask. And notice: it’s not those who know to ask him, but the ones who actually do it (and then keep doing it).

At a school like this, I know that you know to ask God, but are you still asking? It’s amazing, isn’t it, how we get into these relational tensions, sometimes over weeks or months or years, and we think and stress and argue, and we even go ask other people what they think — but how often do we forget and neglect to ask God? To stop, to kneel down, to bow our heads — our thoughts, all our potential solutions and next steps — down before him, and then simply ask: God, would you show me what to do now? Would you open up a path that I can’t see yet? Would you break in here and miraculously mend this relationship?

It’s not too late to ask him.

3. Our words often do the most harm.

The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. (James 3:6–8)

You can feel James reaching for words and imagery to try and pry our eyes open to this reality — flames and stains, bears and sharks, snakes and poison. We don’t think of words like this. Sticks and stones — that’s where the real harm is. That’s the secret Satan’s been dealing out all these years. He knows that words are way more likely to hurt us in the places that really matter. If he wants to start a fire in a home, he reaches for the tongue — and too often, we’re all too glad to give it to him, aren’t we?

There have been times — again I’m thinking primarily in marriage — when I’ve remembered this just a moment too late. I said something impulsive, emotional, and then almost immediately remembered that words hold this staggering power. For a split second, I’d forgotten, and then a fire broke out. Words feel so small and safe in those moments, like a birthday candle and not like an inferno. They come so easily, especially the sinful ones.

Words have an enormous potential for harm, but they have just as much power for good. They can set a home on fire, and they can be a cool, gentle stream of blessing. So, what kind of tongue do you bring to conflict? As you think about the rhythms of your communication in these sensitive or difficult relationships, ask God to make your words a stream and not a flame.

4. Your anger won’t solve this.

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19–20)

Now, this doesn’t mean it’s not right to be angry at times. “Be angry,” the apostle Paul says, “and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26–27). I had to learn this in my first years of marriage — that some anger is good anger, that it was right for Faye to be angry with my sin. James 1:19–20 doesn’t mean we don’t get righteously angry at the right times; it does mean we don’t put our hope in anger. And it’s so easy to hope in anger — isn’t it?

Why do we overreact and lash out at our spouse or roommate? Why do we yell at our kids when we shouldn’t? Because somewhere deep inside of us, we think our anger’s going to make this right. If I can just raise my voice high enough, or glare hard enough, or withdraw far enough, then they’ll shape up and submit, and everything will be alright again.

Unrighteous anger is an attempt to control what we can’t control and produce what we can’t produce. It’s an attempt to be God, which is the very definition of foolishness, instead of rejoicing that God is God, which (as we’ve already seen) is the heart of wisdom.

Our anger doesn’t produce the righteousness of God, so how does wisdom respond in this kind of conflict? James goes on to tell us in 3:17–18: “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

5. The wise don’t fight alone.

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. . . . My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:16, 19–20)

This last chapter in James gives us some glimpses into the corporate dimensions of wisdom, the togetherness of wisdom. Yes, the wisdom we need will ultimately come from God, but again and again, we see that the best place to hear from him is in meaningful community with other believers — the kinds of believers who know our particular weaknesses and temptations because we’ve confessed our sins to them; the kinds of believers who know us well enough to know how to pray for us (and then actually and consistently pray for us); the kinds of believers who, if we ever started wandering away from Christ, would climb over mountains and swim across oceans to bring us home. We need those brothers and those sisters all the time in the Christian life — “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’” (Hebrews 3:13) — but especially when we’re in the dangerous and disorienting fires of some conflict.

Pastor John has said that eternal security is a community project. Well, conflict resolution often is too. So, who are those courageous climbers and swimmers for you? Whom could you exhort, even today? Whom do you know who might need that little push to go and make peace with someone they love? The wise don’t fight alone.

We don’t win fights in these relationships by winning the argument or getting our way. No, we win the fight when we fight like someone who loves Jesus — when we humble ourselves to ask God (and others) for help, when we make peace even when we’ve been wronged, when we put a guard over our mouths and correct one another with gentleness, when we can rejoice even while relationships hurt us because we have our Treasure in the field, our better and abiding possession — in other words, when our conflict bears the unusual, even paradoxical, marks of grace. That’s how we win a fight.

Thanking God for Bethlehem

Last week, I was appointed President & CEO of Desiring God. Had I known I’d be starting a job like this the week before this chapel message, wisdom might have declined. I’m so thankful I said yes before I knew, and I’m so thankful to be in this room just a week into my new role. Here’s our mission statement at Desiring God, what I take to be my job description:

As a Christian Hedonism publishing platform, persuaded by the indispensable biblical reality that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, we exist

     to move people to live for the glory of God,     by helping them be satisfied in God above all else, especially in their suffering,     by communicating the truth, and beauty, and worth of all God is for us in Christ,     grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Christian Scriptures.

Now, I grew up in a marketing home, so I know full well that according to “best business practices” that’s an absolutely terrible mission statement. And I love it so much.

“The only people who get wisdom are people humble enough to ask.”

And the roots of my love for it — for the glory of God, for our joy in him, for the worth of Christ, for the beauty of the gospel, for the centrality of Scripture, for this big, sovereign, satisfying vision of God — are here, in chapels like these and in classrooms like yours, over assignments like yours, under professors like yours, next to classmates like yours. I really believe any qualification and enthusiasm I have for this work is owing, under God, to Bethlehem College & Seminary.

And so, I wanted to take this moment to thank God for this school. To ask the one who gives generously to all without reproach to pour out his grace all over this place and to provide for all you need and more as you spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. And I also want to plead with you, students: Soak up all that you can while you’re here. Ask God for the hunger and stamina to make the most of these classes and assignments. As I’ve learned firsthand over the last couple of months, you really don’t know what God might be preparing you for.

I know it’s hard. I know you’re tired. I know there might be a dozen things you’re really excited to do when school’s over. But you’ve been given an extraordinary gift to learn in a place like this, and for just a few short years. What you’re learning, the tools you’re being entrusted with, will prepare you well for situations and responsibilities you don’t even know are coming — in relationships, in your future work, in the local church, wherever you go.