Audio Transcript

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It’s good to be back with you. And it’s a privilege to be back with you, Pastor John.

Pastor John, a few years ago we were able to have one conversation, and, by God’s grace, we had a second, and now this is our third. So thank you for being here. Thank you for your commitment to Cross Conference. We’re so grateful for you.

It’s a dream come true.

Our Need for Focus

The guys who organized this conference said that they had a whole series planned for this conference around 1 Peter, and when they talked to you, you said, “That’s not the thing we need to do.” You love the Bible, but you wanted it to be a different theme. You chose the theme “Focus.” Why did you want the theme “Focus” for this year? Is that a new thing for our generation only, or is that something other Christians have struggled with also?

I don’t remember it just like that, but we’ll go with that. I think what I was struck with is two conceptions of the problem with lack of focus. One problem is that what you’re focused on is wrong, and the other problem is that you don’t focus — your eyes are blurry. In my mind, focus is intentional, concentrated attention. So, I have an attention possibility in my head, I grasp it, and I direct it intentionally toward something, toward an end. And I don’t think a lot of people do that. I think that’s work. It’s called thinking.

We are, in one sense, a hyper-focused culture with the screens. You look at your screen and somebody’s talking, and you don’t even know they’re talking because you’re so focused. Well, that’s not what I mean. That’s passive focus. You’re not intentionally riveting your attention with a view to going somewhere or accomplishing something. That was one piece of it. I want there to be a generation of people who live their lives intentionally. They know something about God, they know something about the world, and they intentionally rivet their attention on it and make their lives count for that, because otherwise you’re just a jellyfish floating in the water instead of a dolphin.

I preached a sermon one time about that. I have to tell this story, because I used the jellyfish illustration and I said, “You don’t want to be a jellyfish, do you? Who wants to be a jellyfish?” And this little girl in the second row said, “I do.” I said, “No, you don’t. Ask your mommy why. You don’t.” And I just think there are a lot of you who are jellyfish. You’re just drifting. Whatever comes next, you just enjoy it, instead of saying, “No, I’m going to rivet my life’s attention and focus on something infinitely valuable and go for it with all my mind.” That’s the nobody focuses part.

The other part is that what the world thinks is worthy of your focus doesn’t compare to what they don’t think is worthy of your focus. Just check your news feeds, or if you still look at newspapers. I used to marvel that the Minneapolis Star Tribune (it was the main paper in the Twin Cities) — it had an entire section called “Variety,” an entire section called “Business,” and an entire section called “Sport.” There was a whole section called “Sport,” and there was not one single section on God. There was no section on missions and no section on church. The world is focused on the things that they think are important. Right now, they’re feeding you New Orleans. They’re feeding you the coming inauguration. They’re feeding you the war in Gaza. They’re feeding you the war in Ukraine. They’re feeding you the bomb blowing up in front of the Trump Tower. They’re feeding all of this, and you think, What’s the next thing to see? And I’m saying, “Excuse me? That’s not the main thing that’s happening today.”

The main thing that’s happening today is that there are about forty thousand people laying down their lives for Jesus, telling the gospel in places where he’s not yet known. And that’s the focus. So, I didn’t mean to preempt 1 Peter. That’s not good. I think 1 Peter could be really good for focus, and every year is a focus year.

Distracted and Divided

Amen. The theme of our conversation right now is how the glory of Jesus — the one we just heard John talk about — dims out our distractions. Because you, maybe more than any other generation — though distractions have been around for a long time — are inundated with distractions, just like John said. You’re inundated with your TikTok reel or your Instagram reel. What we want you to see today is that when you see Jesus rightly, you’ll see the world clearly.

So with that, Pastor John, I imagine that there are many — hundreds, if not thousands — in this room tonight who would say they’ve trusted in Christ, that they believe that you’re only saved by trusting in his finished work. But when they evaluate their own life, their affections, as you often talk about — they seem often divided and dull for Christ, even as they consider what Christ offers and what the world offers. What the world offers seems just as compelling as to what Christ offers. What would you say to those here who are trusting in Christ, but their affections seem divided? They’re having a hard time seeing Jesus for who he actually is.

Divided affections are dealt with exactly in Psalm 86:11: “Unite my heart to fear your name.” I pray that every morning. I have this prayer that I pray, and the acronym is I-O-U-S. I stands for “Incline my heart to your testimonies” (Psalm 119:36). O is for “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). U is “Unite my heart to fear your name” (Psalm 86:11). And then S is “Satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love” (Psalm 90:14).

You’ve asked me to talk about affections going after the world and going after Jesus. I think it would make a huge difference if all of you had a deeply grounded theology of the affections. The word affections is an eighteenth-century word for emotions. We think emotions are frivolous and like ripples on the sea, where affections are deeper. What I mean by spiritual affections are the kinds of feelings that are prompted by the Holy Spirit. That’s why they’re spiritual. And what I mean by “a well-grounded theology of the affections” — or a theology of joy in particular — is that you may not be persuaded that it’s right to pursue red-hot affections.

When I was in college, I was very conflicted about this because I heard so many speakers say, “You have to do God’s will, not your will.” And I thought, That means a life of perpetual frustration. My will is always canceled. My happiness is always canceled. I need self-denial of my joy. That was always preeminent. Therefore, I thought I needed to live a life of unending frustration while I did God’s will. It really did feel that way. Maybe we’ve come a long way since then; I don’t know. But for me at that time — and perhaps for some of you — I didn’t have a theology of joy, suffering, and the affections that enabled me to say, “Not only are you permitted to pursue maximum joy (namely, joy in God), but you are required to.” That’s what jolted me. Maybe it will jolt some of you. You are required to pursue joy in God. It’s not just a permission; it’s a demand. “Delight yourself in the Lord” is a demand (Psalm 37:4). And I’ve spent most of my last fifty years trying to discern the role of joy and the affections in the Christian life, the Christian motivational structure.

The ultimate reason I’ve hit upon is that God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. Now, if you could be persuaded of that, that you cannot glorify God as you ought until Jesus becomes your most satisfying treasure, then you wouldn’t think joy in God was icing on the cake. It’s the cake. Saving faith has in it a treasuring of Jesus that’s palpable. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). So, believing is coming to Jesus to be satisfied in him, the bread of life. If you’re not satisfied in Jesus, you have a crisis of faith.

Developing that theology of joy, I think, would set students on the kind of quest for joy that might succeed. Because my guess is that the language of affection and the language of the beauty, excellence, and satisfying nature of Jesus is coming out a lot, and it will continue. But my guess is that a lot of you say, “Well, that would be nice, but that’s not my personality. I don’t even think of those categories. I do not talk about delighting in Jesus. I don’t talk about being satisfied in Jesus. I talk about devotion to Jesus, obedience to Jesus, and believing Jesus. I don’t have any of that affection language.” I would say you’re in real danger. You’re in real danger if you ignore the biblical commands to delight in the Lord above all things. I’ll stop here, but then you have to talk about suffering. But we’ll see if that comes out later.

Delighting in the Real Jesus

It’s one thing to say, “Delight in Jesus,” but could we just break it down at the most simple level? What is so wonderful about Jesus that delighting in him is not a burden, but it’s a joy?

Well, you just heard the answer to that in that last message, and I wanted to take hold of John and say, “We saw him, we saw him,” but let me see if I can be more personal. He has to be true, first of all. I mean, you might be sitting there thinking, Everything he said was wonderful. It’s just not true. You think that Jesus isn’t who he said he is. I know people like that. They can talk about all the excellencies of Jesus, all the glories of Jesus, all the power and wisdom and beauty of Jesus. And they say, “This is not true. It’s just a myth. It’s just made up.” And so, the first thing to say about how he becomes your delight is that he becomes real.

I mean, could you give an account right now for why you believe he’s true? Number one, he existed. Could you give an account for that? He was the Son of God. He lived a sinless life. He died on the cross. His purpose was to save sinners. He rose from the dead. He reigns today. He’s coming again. What if somebody said, “Nice — just not true”? And so, we have to come to terms with the truth. I’ll just give you where I would go in answer to that question. And it’s developed over the years.

I’ve read the Bible fifty times maybe, but the apostle Paul’s thirteen letters have become my friends — so much so that I love the apostle Paul. I love him. I have a Rembrandt picture of him. Nobody knows what Paul looked like, but I have a picture in my exercise room in the attic, along with Jonathan Edwards, my dad, and Dan Fuller. I turn off my audiobook before I run in the morning, and I look at these four men, and I look at Paul, who started it all for those, and I say, “I love you. I love you. I thank you for suffering like you did.” Now, you would think, “That’s the way you would talk to Jesus. You talk to Jesus that way.” Absolutely I do, but here’s the catch: I have a PhD in critical New Testament studies, which is just deadly to your faith, right? I got it in Germany. It’s deadly.

I know what the critics say about the inauthenticity of the Gospels. One of the teachers I was studying under said there are about six sayings of Jesus that may go back to Jesus in the Gospels. That’s just deadly. But they will admit that there are at least six of Paul’s letters that are authentic. Nobody in the world who’s had any critical skills at all would doubt that Paul wrote six of these thirteen letters. Take away everything else. Just give me those six letters. And I have lived with him in those letters to the point where I cannot call him a fool. I cannot call him deceived. I cannot call him an egomaniac. I would face any skeptic anywhere in the world who is telling me why this, this, and this cannot be true about Jesus, and I would say, “Okay, I have your word, and I have Paul’s word. He has won my trust. I don’t even know who you are.” I might say, “You don’t think clearly,” or “You have an axe to grind.”

What I’m commending to you is that you need to immerse yourself in the Bible — especially in the Gospels with regard to Jesus and the Epistles with regard to Paul, and see whether or not he’s credible to you as a testimony. All we can know about the past is what is testified. I have given Paul my credit.

Now, once I do that, the things he says explode, because we’re talking reality. I mean, the things he says are so off-the-charts amazing. I’ll just give you one example. When they were boasting in Corinth, he said,

Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1 Corinthians 3:21–23)

If you’re a child of God, you inherit the universe. I’m saying that, if you slow down, if you’re convinced it’s true, if you savor the specifics of Scripture, they will move you. And if they don’t, you need to be on your face in repentance, praying, “O God, open my eyes; awaken my heart; move me. Don’t let me be dead like a log.” (I just finished reading the new translation of Calvin’s On the Christian Life. Several times he talks about people being logs.)

That was a long answer to what’s so great about Jesus. The answer is, “He’s true.” And once you get that settled — deeply settled, so you could die for it without batting an eye — then the particulars that come from it are staggeringly glorious.

Amen.

They demand poetry. They demand songs. I say that because I had a lot of leisure time over the holidays, and I wrote a fifteen-stanza poem. I thought it was going to be a song, but nobody sings fifteen-stanza songs. We might sing it at Desiring God just for fun. But it was on the question, What is serious joy? I wrote that poem, and I’ve written poems all my life because he’s better than mere prose can communicate.

Amen. As you’re saying that, I’m reminded that I was preaching through Mark last year, and the leper comes to Jesus. I assume he was having to yell, “Unclean, unclean,” as he runs to Jesus. He’s probably not been near people or touched in maybe all his life. And he says to Jesus, “If you will, you can make me clean.” He’s thinking, “I know you’re able, but I’m not sure you will.” And Jesus reaches out and touches him and says, “I will.” I thought, “Who is this man who does that?” It’s only the God-man. That’s so glorious and so sweet.

When you hear about floods and tsunamis and hurricanes, you should have ringing in your ear, “The wind and the waves obey him.” Really, you just have to come to terms with that. Either he is in charge of the wind and the hurricanes and what happened in Asheville and across the south, or it’s a fake. They said about him, “Even the wind and waves obey you,” which means he can stop any wind he wants, any flood he wants, or any plane crash he wants. He can stop any catastrophe, and that just makes things totally real. I have to either stop worshiping this man, or I have to bow before that majesty.

By Grace We Are What We Are

Amen. So, one of the things that we all struggle with is comparison. And when you’re in your twenties, it is very dominant in your mind. How does seeing Jesus the way you just talked about help us put comparison to death?

First Corinthians 15:10 says,

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

It didn’t land on me until recently when he said, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Now, grace is good. God’s grace is not, “Oh, I missed it,” or “Your harm is really what I’m after.” That’s not grace. And Paul said, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Now, either you’re going to be okay with that or reject him. You might say, “He’s not gracious, he’s not powerful, and he’s not wise.” You might say he’s not gracious because you don’t like how tall you are or how your fatty tissue is proportioned in your body, or how your hair is, or how your complexion is, or how your personality is, or how your disability is.

Oh my goodness, I’m so glad that we have Joni Eareckson Tada writing a book like The Practice of the Presence of Jesus, which my wife and I read out loud to each other last year. I’m giving it to people right and left. I’m going to require it as a textbook for my class on 2 Corinthians because Joni, as you know, has been in a wheelchair for about 53 years, and she’s singing like nobody sings. That is crucial. We need more witnesses like that to God’s sovereignty in controlling what happens to us. She could be very bitter and say, “I don’t like the way I am. I don’t want to be in this chair.” She’s very honest. She said, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get to heaven is bow before Jesus and then throw this chair into hell.” And that’s a very good way to say it. But she’s not accusing Jesus as being hellish while she’s in that chair.

I don’t know what you’re dealing with that makes you not like the way God made you. I mean, I have been frustrated all my life that I can’t read quicker. I can’t read any faster than I can talk. I struggled like crazy to get this education that I got. I’ll just never be a great scholar. I won’t. I won’t be like Kevin DeYoung. He’s going to talk to you on Saturday. That guy reads everything. He remembers what he reads, and he says smart things about what he reads. I just look at that and say, “I might read a book a month — maybe.”

Just know that when I was a little younger than most of you, I could not speak in front of a group. I was paralyzed. In the ninth grade, the teacher required that we read one paragraph in front of the whole class to describe our project. As we were coming down the road to me, I looked down, and I could see my shirt moving up and down because my heart was beating so hard. I got up, I went to the bathroom, and I cried my eyes out. That’s the ninth grade. I could not speak in front of a group. I hated it. Now, I didn’t know what God was doing. It didn’t make sense to me at all. Then there was also my slow reading, and I had acne. I hated acne. I hated pimples. I thought, Nobody can like me. I had these zits all over my face. (It’s hard to be a teenager. I’ll tell you; it is.) From my perspective now, I think I sinned a lot in responding that way to my disability. God had plans to do something that I don’t think anybody can quite estimate.

So, by the grace of God, you are who you are. That’s the first answer to the question “What do you do when people scorn you, disapprove of you? What do you do when you don’t measure up to them, and you don’t measure up to yourself?”

The other thing I would say is that being so gloriously satisfied to know Jesus and to know his approval caused Peter and the other apostles to come out from being beaten and shamed rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to be shamed for the sake of the name (Acts 5:41). You have a great Jesus when you can have a whole crowd of people mock you, and you walk out rejoicing. That’s the miracle we want to happen in this conference. You are so satisfied in his identity of you, his friendship with you, his acceptance of you, his purpose for your life, that these other people don’t count like that counts.

This is true confession. I’m 78 years old. I’ll turn 79 in a few days. That means I’m entering my eightieth year, which means I’m entering my ninth decade. That’s old. I was in a group thinking, I have my identity nailed down. John Piper knows who he is. I’m okay with that. I know what I can’t do, and I know what I can do. I was playing a game, and one of the pieces of the game was that everybody needed to think of a suit from the card. We went around to see how many had the same one. I didn’t know what they were. I’ve never played a game of cards in my life. Can you believe that? I mean, I’m so totally fundie and out of it.

“You cannot overestimate the importance of the Bible in your life.”

I said, “I think there’s a king in the deck?” I said, “King,” and they laughed at me, and I felt that old sting. I really did. I felt, Everybody thinks you’re an idiot. “You have pimples.” “You can’t talk.” “You’re one of those crazy Christians.” This is a dangerous thing. That doesn’t happen very often to me, but I felt the sting, and I kind of laughed and rolled with it. We are sinners to the end, in need of grace.

Kept by God Alone

Yes, if the sovereign God sent his Son to die for you, it doesn’t ultimately matter what anybody says about you.

Considering what we heard earlier today with Garrett’s message, I imagine that, over the last sixty years of your life, you’ve probably seen a lot of people who would say nothing is more satisfying than Jesus. But then you’ve seen some of those same people live out what Jesus warned about in Mark 4 — that when the pressure came, when the pleasure was offered, when the persecution was there, they were willing to desert Jesus. What’s kept you from being one of those who fell away? What habits have you cultivated in your life to continue to see and savor Jesus for all of your days?

Well, those are not the same — what has kept me and what are the habits. So, let’s deal with them one at a time.

What has kept me is God. When I stepped down from the senior-pastor position at Bethlehem thirteen years ago, Together for the Gospel was a big conference — like this, here in this town — and I was up to speak at that. First time speaking as a non-pastor after 33 years, and that’s what I spoke about: he kept me. Jude says,

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24–25)

That’s probably one of the greatest doxologies or benedictions in the Bible. And what’s it all been in praise of? He keeps us. There’s only one hope for you, and it isn’t the habits that you’re going to develop. It’s that God’s grace will hold on to you. Which means that the first habit is to pray, “Do that.” I’ve probably prayed that prayer as often as any prayer: “Keep me. Keep me.” I have a little prayer bench at home. I go to my prayer bench that I have. I’ve spent a lot of time there, and a lot of it has been just desperate, praying, “Keep me.” Maybe marriage was on the rocks, and it felt awful. Noël and I could hardly talk to each other. I would pray, “Please hold on to me. Hold on to her.” Or it could be, “The church is about to split, and 230 people have just left. Please, please hold on to me.” I just think that’s what you do. If you find yourself getting close to walking away from Jesus, just go flat and pray, “Hold on to me. I can’t do it. I can’t hold on to you. Hold on to me.” That’s number one.

And number two is to listen to him. That’s been said, and it will be said. You cannot overestimate the importance of the Bible in your life. You really cannot. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). That’s not just about conversion. It’s about tomorrow morning and staying a believer. I ask people everywhere I go, “What makes you think you’re going to be a Christian tomorrow morning — that you’re going to be a believer when you wake up in the hotel room? What makes you think you’re going to be a believer? Why wouldn’t your faith just be gone when you wake up tomorrow morning? Why won’t you just be in love with the world like Demas and go away from Jesus? Why wouldn’t that happen?” If you say, “Well, I’m smart,” or something else, you’re wrong. There’s only one answer: he keeps you, and he uses means, and prayer and the word are the primary means.

Somebody mentioned you should read biographies. That’s true. Isn’t it amazing that God didn’t just give the church a Bible and say, “Now, you have your Bible, and you have the Holy Spirit. You don’t need teachers.” Wouldn’t that magnify the worth of the Bible? Wouldn’t that magnify the power of the Holy Spirit? You don’t need Ben Lacey as a pastor. You don’t need Pastor John to write books. You don’t need human teachers. You have the Bible, and you have the Holy Spirit. Just go off and get your theology. But the New Testament says every church should have elders, and elders should be apt to teach. And all of you, if you’re not an elder, should be under elders and they’re teaching you.

Here’s maybe one more thing in that regard. Where does that intersect? This is another answer to, how did Piper stay in love with Jesus? And the answer is this: corporate worship under the word of God. I feel bad for those of you who are in churches where you are not hearing solid, good, rich biblical exposition of glorious truth. I hope that changes for you sooner or later. But I’ve been in churches where I’ve heard that and I’ve led that, and I can tell you, my marriage was saved more than once by corporate worship.

Here’s the way it works. I can remember sitting before I went into the pulpit to preach. I would be on the front pew. We would be singing a song, and somebody was going to read Scripture, and Noël and I weren’t talking to each other. She or I said something ugly last night. One of the kids stayed out too late. We were just seeing things opposite, and it’s awful emotionally. I’m angry at her, at the kids, and I have to preach in three minutes.

The kind of songs we sang were like ones here: “How Great Thou Art,” “In Christ Alone,” “To Christ Be the Glory.” In those moments, I would be standing there and have Tom Steller, my associate, next to me with his eyes closed with his hands in the air. And I was stewing about my marriage. I would look at Tom, look at the others, and see people enjoying God in worship, and I would be broken. I would think, What’s wrong with you, Piper? This marriage is worth billions of dollars. She’s precious to you. Why are you so out of proportion with your emotions right now? And the corporate-ness of the worship rescued me.

That’s the word in corporate worship. Being in a good church would be a wonderful way to be kept by the sovereignty of God.

Amen. If you leave here and get in the word and get in a church who gets in the word, that’s a good thing to remember for the rest of your life.

It is.

Convictions Behind a Dream

You were a part of a group twelve years ago that dreamed up Cross Conference. Why did y’all dream this up? And what are some things that you want to say to this generation in light of that conversation you had twelve years ago?

I won’t be able to remember all of them, but I’ll make a stab at some of them. There were dimensions of God and dimensions of the world that we felt were not being captured as fully, deeply, richly, and globally as we thought they should be. We were all Calvinists (and we still are), meaning we love the sovereignty of God, and we believe God saves us decisively, not we ourselves. And so that was right at the heart. Big-God theology would be another word for it. We wanted a conference that had big-God theology. When you come to this conference, you’re going to get a big, sovereign, glorious God. That was a big piece of it.

Secondly, we were driven by the lostness of the world. We looked around at conferences, and it looked as though the shift was from seeking to rescue sinners by the gospel to seeking to make life better in this world with the gospel. Now, you might wonder, Well, is that wrong? Here’s the little saying that I’ve used, and I think we share it as a conference: Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.

Now, the reason that statement is valuable is because it makes conservatives and liberals nervous. Everybody gets nervous. Liberals get nervous because you say “especially eternal suffering,” and they don’t even believe in hell. And that’s what is especially important: rescuing people from eternal suffering. And conservatives get nervous because you said you care about all suffering — like all the wars, all the poverty, all the homelessness, and all the fentanyl addiction, suicides, and overdoses. And we expect that in our churches. People are going to have a burden for all those things.

I hope you hear those two things at this conference. We care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering. If you can’t say both of those, something’s wrong with your heart or your theology — really wrong. We really believe in hell. We really believe in hell as a horrible, horrible future. My wife and I just watched a documentary about Dante, who wrote Inferno. His description of the nine levels of hell and who’s there is of course imaginary, but it was shocking. We believe in hell.

We believe that people’s languages all over the world are to be focused on by the church till the church is planted there. In other words, we’re not just about saving individuals, but we care about the fact that God has so governed the world that there are several thousand languages that don’t have churches among them so that the gospel can’t flow in a natural way across the language because nobody has gone there, learned the culture, learned the language, and planted the church. That’s a huge thing for us. Reach the peoples. Reach the languages.

Another one is the church. We’ve stressed it here. I’m going to preach the last message here on Saturday, and I’m going to call for some of you to stand up. And one of the ways it’s going to go is that we at this conference don’t just want you to say, “I have a vision for missions, so here I go. Where’s the agency I can go with?” No, it’s going to be, “Where’s the church I can belong to, plug in to, grow in, and be sent by?” And if you don’t have one of those, part of this conference is aimed to motivate you in that direction. We have a local-church orientation towards missions.

And maybe one more thing would be contextualization. Contextualization means this: we looked around the world thirteen years ago, and we saw drifts in missions that basically accommodated so much of the local culture that you couldn’t recognize Christianity anymore. So, you win a Muslim to Christ and tell them to stay in the mosque, tell them to read the Quran, and tell them to speak to the prophet but to also add Jesus. That’s not a good way to view contextualization. I mean, contextualization is real. Paul said, “I become all things to all people that I might win some” (see 1 Corinthians 9:22). You can’t talk to somebody if they don’t know the language that you’re speaking.

So, we saw a whole cluster of issues in theology and missions that needed addressing. And when I said a minute ago that this is a dream come true, you’re it. I mean, we sat in a hotel room in Minneapolis thirteen years ago, and it never entered my mind, I don’t think, that I would be looking out on fifteen students at the Cross Conference. So, I’m amazed what God is up to in these days.

Take a Risk

Amen. Here are two more questions in light of that. You talk often about risk. You say that in the gospel and with the Great Commission, risk is right. There may be many people here tonight who think, “Jesus is glorious.” They do want to answer the call to the Great Commission and go to the ends of the earth, but they’re calculating the risk because there is a cost to it. There is a cost of comfort, convenience, money, disappointing family and friends, and dreams of a life in the States potentially. What would you say to those who are calculating the risk and why is risk right?

Well, Jesus said, “Count the cost” (Luke 14:28). So that’s not anybody’s imagination; that’s just Jesus. When you try to lead someone to Jesus, don’t make it sound easy. It isn’t. And you shouldn’t do bait and switch in your evangelism.

I think the first thing to say is to get the meaning of risk clear. God not only does not take any risks, but he also cannot take any risks. I was at a mission conference one time where the whole message was built around the idea that God risked creation, and it went bad. God risked sending his Son into the world, and he got killed. I just thought, This is absolute heresy — because the meaning of risk is that you don’t know what the danger is. If you know what the danger is that you’re walking into, you call it sacrifice, not risk. Risk is when you step into a situation or move toward a goal and you don’t know how bad it may go. It may go very bad, or it may not, and that’s the risk.

So, God can’t risk, and the reason that’s so important is because the fact that God can’t risk but knows everything and rules everything means you can:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (Romans 8:35–37)

In the end, the reason you take risks is because they aren’t a very big risk. I used to say that to folks in my church because I’d invite them to come and live in the neighborhood, which was called Murder-apolis, and I would say, “Fear not: you can only be killed,” because that’s exactly what Jesus said. He says,

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:28–30)

Come on; lay it down. Take a risk.

Now, the crucial question then is, “For what? Which risks?” Bungee jumping and skydiving are not one of them. I think you should risk for the glory of God and the good of people, not for thrills. So yes, you probably should drive a car. That’s huge. I said to my wife as we were driving on our anniversary in December, “Look at these cars coming out. They’re going sixty miles an hour. They’re passing you four feet to the right. Any one of them could swerve over in front.” That’s a risk. You have your calculus, and it’s not wrong to calculate. But risk for things that really matter, and the more they matter, the higher you should be willing to risk. Though that’s not a solution.

I had the father of a missionary that we sent get so angry with me. He was not a believer, and his son was going to the Middle East under my influence. At the airport, as his son was leaving with his wife and kids, he looked at me and he said, “If he doesn’t come back, I’m going to kill you.” That was worth the risk. He did come back, but that’s worth it because those people need Jesus.

All Peoples Before the Throne

Amen. Yes, there are no risks with God. Amen. That’s such an encouraging word.

I would love for you to just read Revelation 7, if you don’t mind. If you have your Bible, I’d encourage you to open there now. We’re going to have Pastor John read Revelation 7:9–17. And after you read this, would you mind just explaining to us how this passage should shape and inform how we live the rest of our lives?

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

“Therefore they are before the throne of God,     and serve him day and night in his temple;     and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;     the sun shall not strike them,     nor any scorching heat.For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,     and he will guide them to springs of living water,and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Worship God. That’s why the universe was made, and God stepped in so that there could be this strange thing where you turn white by washing in red — they made their robes white with blood (Revelation 7:14). That’s a paradox that should just lodge itself in your mind.

And the mission of God is that all those peoples that are mentioned here at the beginning of the text — the peoples, the tribes, the nations, the languages — have all come because these other folks have been faithful. They laid down their lives, and they’ve taken that message of being clean through blood, and God has saved people from all the peoples. And he said that was going to happen in Matthew 24:14, and the outcome is that we are with him eternally. And there’s no hunger. The sun doesn’t strike us, and there’s no scorching heat. God is caring for us. The Lamb is shepherding us. We’re drinking living water. Every tear is wiped away, and it was worth it.

Amen. Pastor John, thank you so much again. Would you pray for us to conclude our time together?

Father, please, it’s been a long day for these students. Grant them focus through the evening and strength. Open the eyes of their heart to see what is the greatness of your power at work in those who believe. I ask that you would do exceedingly and abundantly beyond what we can ask or think. Make the word of God live for them. Keep them, Lord, so that they do wake up believers in the morning and stay believers until Jesus comes or until he calls. I say this in Jesus’s name. Amen.

Amen.

What is Look at the Book?

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

You want your life to matter. Maybe you look back with regret at years of trifling or lusting or swearing or drinking. You’ve wasted so much time dead in your trespasses and sins that now you awake anxious to make up for lost time. You’ve been asleep to great things for so long.

For as long as you have left to live, you want to live for Jesus. So many friends and family don’t know him. So much to do. So little time. You think you hear the Lord say, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Your heart cries, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8). Holy ambitions fly high; practical knowledge runs low. What do you do now to make the best use of the time you have left?

My first word to young men, especially those with ministry aspirations, is to grow deep.

Grow Deep

Young man, you feel a keen ambition for holy usefulness. You wish to serve Jesus with a strength double that with which you formerly served evil. Good. True Christianity is no listless, small, insignificant call that demands nothing, risks nothing, toils for nothing, expects nothing. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Only by God’s power and grace will you sustain your race, complete your soldiery, arrive safely home — let alone bring others with you.

You dedicate your bow, your sword, your spear to his service. He doesn’t need them, but he accepts them. Wherever he points, you will ride. You are willing to be deployed now: What sermons need preaching, what neighbors need gospeling, what Bible study needs leading?

My aim is not to dissuade these actions, but to ensure their success. To this end, I offer one simple principle well-attested in Scripture: Relentlessly attend to what lies beneath the soil — your personal holiness and communion with the Lord. While many others focus great exertions on growing upward — on their visible, public ministry — you grow, and grow deep, in the unseen places.

I wish to channel your ambition ever downward into the soil, into secret communion with God. To the eyes of natural ambition, this seems like a detour. But it is the secret detour to real and sustained usefulness in the kingdom, just as the disciples went away and waited in the upper room for power from on high. Take opportunities to be used of God as they arise, immerse yourself in good works, fan your abilities into flame, but do not make your usefulness the greater priority. This secures not only greater effectiveness in the long run but greater joy and strength in the work.

Vine and Branches

One text that has checked me in the best ways over the years is John 15. When I stare outward too long, this text returns my eyes downward. The Spirit reminds me that my fruitfulness grows from depth with my Lord and personal holiness.

Jesus, using a slightly different metaphor than the tree imagery of Psalm 1, tells his disciples on the eve of his death: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). You and I are not the vine. We do not have life in ourselves. Our best ambitions, broken off from Christ, are powerless. We are the branches. We derive all life and fruit from the vine, who is Christ.

On several walks with unbelievers, I have stopped to pick up dead branches from the ground. They lay fruitless at the foot of the tree. I hold it up and say something like, “Jesus Christ makes a startling claim when he says that this is a man’s life apart from him — withering and soon to be cast into the fire and burned (John 15:6). But look at those branches up top, connected to the tree — healthy, vibrant, fruitful. This is a man’s life trusting, believing, and following him.”

So it is with you and me. The ground has seen many dry branches once named pastors who withered because they allowed their desire to do for God crowd out their desire to be with God. They stared at their branch, constantly assessing their productivity, and lost sight of the vine. The less fruit they saw, the more they strained to extend themselves out to benefit others instead of sending themselves deeper into the source, to get life for their own souls.

But whom does Jesus teach will bear much fruit? “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus wants you to be fruitful. As does the Father. Jesus tells his disciples, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8). Go after much fruit, for much fruit brings much honor to your Father and proves you to be a disciple of Christ.

But how does Jesus teach you to go after this fruit? You go after him. You stay with him in prayer, in obedience, in hidden communion. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). And what can you expect from abiding in him? Much fruit, and with it, much joy. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Apart from him, what can you expect to accomplish? Nothing, except unhappiness and futility. We want the Vine because we love and find joy in the Vine. And the Vine bestows life and fruit because he loves the branches.

Need of the Hour

What does the world need? The world needs men who have grown deep and keep growing deeper.

The world does not need men whose zeal to teach outpaces their zeal to abide. It needs men with deep roots. Men who know their God, walk humbly with him, cry out to him, burn with his flame, warm with his love.

God’s men study hard and read great thoughts of other men, but they know that diligent study alone cannot make a man of God. These are spiritual men, men tarrying in God’s presence, men who spend much time upon the mountain with the Lord. Give us these men, men who grow deep before God makes them tall, for these men turn the world upside down.

So, young man, grow deep. While others clamor for the seat of honor, seek to assert themselves over planting themselves, let your Lord strengthen you, build you up, humble you, and call you to a higher seat as he sees fit and in his good timing.

To remind myself of this advice, I wrote this poem years ago.

The Master throws seed all over the groundThey hatch and mature without making a sound.In quiet depths while tired eyes sleep,You, small seed, grow and grow deep.

Let other plants dream of reaching the sky,Extending their arms to birds passing by,Of harboring nests adorned with green leaves,Of all they can do, but you must receive.

They shoot themselves up to stand as the oak,But you burrow down to drink and to soak.They straighten their backs where living things creep,But you, little seed, grow and grow deep.

They take great delight as they sprout from the earth.They spread forth their hands to show forth their worth.No time for that kingdom where low things abound;Their trusted way up is the quickest way down.

For they swayed above ground and lived among brutes;They had stem, they had leaf, but they never had roots.They only desired to dance tall in the breeze,Not knowing great oaks grow tall on their knees.

But you, little seed, cling to the Giver.Plant yourself deep, that your leaves never wither.Don’t rush to the high; rather sink to the low.Let Christ welcome up; let God make you grow.

Audio Transcript

If you’re following the Navigators Bible Reading Plan with us in 2025, you know we’re in Romans, and today we’re reading Romans 5. In that reading, Romans 5:2 stands out to me. There, Paul models a life that is “[rejoicing] in hope of the glory of God.” Our present rejoicing is a hoping joy, an anticipating joy, a desiring joy, a joy felt now but a joy in something to come — something we don’t have in hand yet, a hope in a future glory that sustains our joy right now. We’ve revisited this precious truth often on Ask Pastor John. For me, it recalls the time we asked, “Is John Piper happy?” Your answer — rooted in this very text — was, yes, John Piper is happy, even amid life’s very painful sorrows. Why? Largely because of Romans 5:2, as you can see in the Ask Pastor John book — if you have a copy handy — on pages 306–307.

Glorious texts like Romans 5:2 prompt questions from listeners like Chip, who writes from Georgia: “Pastor John, hello. Christian Hedonism seems to say that our deepest longings in this life can only be satisfied by God, and that only in him can we be truly happy. If God makes us happier than people who pursue the world, why does Paul say we are to be pitied most of all men if there is no resurrection? (1 Corinthians 15:19). Isn’t our life, even now, more satisfying than that of a non-Christian?”

I am smiling real big. I love sharp, biblically rooted questions. So, I’ve asked this — in fact, I’ve spoken on it. Years ago, I spoke to the Wycliffe folks in Cameroon on this very question, so I was trying to remember what I said. It is a really important and good question rooted in 1 Corinthians 15. So, let me just bring Chip — and the rest of us — up to where I’m thinking today. And I don’t know that I have the completely satisfying answer, but I have some answers that have helped me.

Finding Joy in the Pain

Just a clarification to start with about Christian joy in this painful life. A huge part of our joy as Christians is what Paul calls “[rejoicing] in hope” in Romans 5. In other words, joy is not complete in what we can know and have of God here now. Our joy is in hope of what we will know and have of God in the future.

Also, our joy here is a foretaste of the fullness of joy there. And so, it’s not complete now. We see through a glass darkly, and we know in part, so our joy is in part (1 Corinthians 13:9–12). It’s strong now; it’s deep now; it’s enough to carry the day now. But it’s nothing near like what it will be. So, Romans 5:2 says, “Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” That means that the joy we anticipate in the age to come flows back into this age in measure, but not in fullness — in measure.

“We rejoice in our sufferings,” he says, “knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3–4). So, we are people who have this strange emotional experience of rejoicing in what we don’t yet have to make us happy. So, I don’t want to overstate the joy of the Christian Hedonist in this age. It is not nearly what it will be in the age to come, and much of it is anticipatory now.

Why the Pity?

So, here are the key words that create the problem in 1 Corinthians 15. The context is that Paul is talking about whether Christ has been raised from the dead or not. He says in 1 Corinthians 15:14–17, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God” — that is, we’re false witnesses of God, liars about God — “because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.” And then 1 Corinthians 15:17–18: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.”

“Paul’s sufferings were sustained by his joy in Christ, not the other way around.”

We’re going to come back to that. That’s really crucial. “Christians have gone to hell. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. They’ve gone to hell.” “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). And the question is, How can Christians, who have more joy than anybody else, be most to be pitied? That’s the question. And I’m asking, Why did you say that, Paul? And here are the reasons for why Paul says this. I think I see four.

1. A deluded life is pitiable.

Evidently, Paul believes that a life of delusion is to be pitied, even if it’s a happy delusion. It’s not just that what we’re experiencing in this life proves to be more or less happy in the other. It proves to be non-existent in the other. If Christ is not raised from the dead, then my joy in the living Christ is not joy in the living Christ. There is no living Christ, and therefore I am not experiencing joy in the living Christ. I am an absolute idiot. I’m a fool.

Paul’s first conviction, it seems to me, is that this is not true. Christ is raised. And his second conviction is that it’s a delusion if he’s not raised. And it’s an enormous delusion — more pitiable than anything he could think of, evidently. So, that’s the first reason: a delusory life, a life lived in absolute delusion, is to be pitied.

2. Pointless sufferings are pitiable.

Paul’s life would be pitiable because he willingly embraced so much suffering that he could have avoided. Those sufferings were sustained by Paul’s joy in Christ, not the other way around. The sufferings didn’t create the joy in this life. So, if there’s no resurrection, those sufferings were absolutely pointless. That’s the second one.

3. Empty hopes are pitiable.

We deny ourselves many pleasures here precisely for the sake of the reward of the age to come. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:11–12).

So, we renounce retaliation and the joy of getting back at people. We renounce that. We renounce the comforts of fitting into the world so that we don’t ever have to be criticized or reviled. We renounce that. Why? Precisely because we believe it will be made up to us in heaven. Which means we didn’t just fail to maximize the pleasures we could have had here, but we bargained that the self-denial would be rewarded in the resurrection, and there is no resurrection, and the bargain failed.

4. False prophets are pitiable.

Here’s the fourth and last reason I think he said it. This one comes straight out of his words: “If Christ and we are not raised from the dead, then . . .” Paul doesn’t infer atheism. He infers hell — that we enter a worse punishment in hell than others because we didn’t just make a mistake; we actively misrepresented God.

Oftentimes, I’ve read this chapter in this argument as though, “Well, if there’s no resurrection from the dead, the whole biblical religion is false. There is no God. Que sera sera. Let’s eat, drink, and make merry.” That is not what Paul does. He didn’t argue like that. He says, “If Christ has not been raised, God’s going to send me to hell because I’ve been telling everybody that this is his Son and he’s been raised from the dead. And I am a false prophet, and therefore I am of all people most to be pitied, for I’m going to get the worst punishment.”

Most to Be Pitied

So, I would sum it up — here they are: If there is no risen Christ, no resurrection of believers unto eternal reward and joy, then . . .

1. Christian life is a delusion.

2. Voluntary suffering is painfully pointless.

3. Hope in heaven is futile, and all of our basing our self-denials on it was ridiculous.

4. Any attempt to speak for the living Christ would be a damnable scam and a false prophecy, which would deserve hell even more than others. And we would perish under that severe sentence.

So, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Let me tell you here at the very beginning what the main point of this message is. The main point is this: what the world needs from the church — from Redeemer Church of Dubai, from each of you who make up this church — is indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow. I’ll say it again: what the world needs from the church is indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow.

When I came to the end of my 33 years of pastoral work at Bethlehem Baptist Church back in 2013, in preparing for my last service, I wrote a note to the worship leaders to try to help them catch hold of the spirit that I wanted to prevail in that service. I said that I wanted it to have the flavor of “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

I believe that, for these decades, this theme and tone has marked us deeply. We are a happy people. But we are not what you might call “chipper.” There is a plaintive strain in the symphony of our lives. I think Jesus was the happiest man who ever lived. And oh, how sorrowful! He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Our signature song has been “It Is Well with My Soul.”

When peace like a river attendeth my wayWhen sorrows like sea billows roll,Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,“It is well. It is well with my soul.”

I think that would be a good song to end the service with. God bless and guide you as you build a joyful service that makes all the sufferers know: we’ve been there.

Done with Games

I tried for those 33 years to lead the staff and the elders and the people in the experience of sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Because I turn with dismay from church worship services that are treated like radio talk shows or podcasts where everything sounds like chipper, frisky, high-spirited chatter designed to make people feel lighthearted and playful and bouncy.

I look at those services, and I say to myself, Don’t you know that people are sitting out there who are dying of cancer, whose marriage is a living hell, whose children have broken their hearts, who are barely making it financially, who have just lost their job, who are lonely and frightened and misunderstood and depressed? Not to mention that we are here to meet an infinitely holy God. And you are going to try to create an atmosphere of bouncy, chipper, frisky, lighthearted, playful worship of the Creator of the universe who loved us by having his Son crucified?

And, of course, there will be those who hear me say that and say, “Oh, so you think what those people need is a morose, gloomy, sullen, dark, heavy atmosphere of solemnity?” No. What they need is to see and feel indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow. They need to taste that this church is not playing games here. They are not trying to replicate any enthusiasm the world knows.

“What the world needs from the church is indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow.”

They are not using religion as a platform for the same old hyped-up self-help that the world offers every day. What the world needs is the greatness and the grandeur and the thunderous power of God over their heads like galaxies of hope. They need the unfathomable crucified and risen Christ embracing them in love with blood all over his face and hands. And they need the thousand-mile-deep rock of God’s word under their feet. No, they don’t need you to compete with the world for a tone that sounds more like cheerleading than the cherishing of blood-bought grace.

They need to hear us sing with all our heart and soul,

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;The clouds ye so much dreadAre big with mercy and shall breakIn blessings on your head.

His purposes will ripen fast,Unfolding every hour;The bud may have a bitter taste,But sweet will be the flower.

They need to hear our indomitable joy in sorrow as we sing,

His oath, his covenant, his blood,Support me in the whelming flood.When all around my soul gives way,He then is all my hope and stay.

If you ask me, “Doesn’t the world need to see Christians being happy in order to know the truth of our faith and be drawn to the great Savior?” my answer is, yes, yes, yes. And they need to see our happiness as the indomitable work of Christ in the midst of our sorrow — a sorrow probably deeper than they have ever known that we live with every day. They need to see “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

What Does the World Need?

Let’s put some of that solid foundation under our feet now — the rock of God’s word. What John Piper thinks about joy and sorrow counts for nothing compared to what God thinks. So let’s go to the Bible and see if these things are so.

We will focus on 2 Corinthians 6:3–10. Why have I put the emphasis on what the world needs? Why have I framed the main point of this sermon as “What the world needs from the church is indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow”? The answer is in 2 Corinthians 6:3–4. Paul says, “We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way.”

In other words, Paul is saying, “What I am about to do in this chapter is remove obstacles and commend our ministry.” He wants the church in Corinth and the world not to write him off, not to walk away, not to misunderstand who he is and what he teaches and whom he represents. He wants to win them. He really does want to win them over. He wants the church and the world to see what they really need.

It’s amazing what he does here. Many savvy church-growth communicators today would have no categories for this way of removing obstacles and commending Christianity. In fact, some might say, “Paul, you are not removing obstacles; you are creating obstacles.” So, let’s watch Paul remove obstacles and commend his ministry. “This,” he says in effect, “is what the world needs.”

How Paul Commends His Ministry

He does this in three steps: he describes the sufferings he endures, he describes the character he tries to show, and he describes the paradoxes of the Christian life.

First, he describes the sufferings he endures for Christ (2 Corinthians 6:3–5):

We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger . . .

So, be asking yourself, How is this removing obstacles? How is this commending his ministry? Why is this not putting people off rather than drawing them in?

Second, he describes the character he tries to show (2 Corinthians 6:6–7):

. . . by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left [probably the sword of the Spirit in the right hand and the shield of faith in the left, like Ephesians 6:16–17 says] . . .

Instead of being embittered and frustrated and angry and resentful by all the afflictions and hardships and calamities and labors and sleepless nights, by God’s grace Paul has shown patience and kindness and love. His spirit has not been broken by the pain of his ministry. In the Holy Spirit, he has found resources to give and not to grumble; to be patient in God’s timing rather than pity himself; to be kind to people rather than take it out on others.

And third, Paul describes the paradoxes of the Christian life (2 Corinthians 6:8–10):

. . . through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

When you walk in the light, minister in the power of Holy Spirit, and speak the truth in “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, and love,” some people will honor you, and some will dishonor you; some will slander you, and some will praise you. And that dishonor and slander may come in the form of calling you an impostor. They might say, “You’re not real. You’re just a religious hypocrite.”

Remember Jesus said, “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26), which means that in Paul’s mind a mixed reception (some honoring and praising, some dishonoring and slandering) was part of his commendation. It removed this obstacle: “You can’t be a true prophet; all speak well of you.”

Ministry of Many Paradoxes

Then come six more paradoxes. If you aren’t careful, you might take these to mean that Paul is correcting false perceptions of Christians, but it’s not quite like that. Every perception here of the outsider has truth in it. But Paul says, “What you see is true, but it’s not the whole truth or the main truth.”

You see us “as unknown, and yet [we are] well known” (verse 9). Yes, we are nobodies in the Roman Empire. We’re a tiny movement following a crucified and risen King. But oh, we are known by God, and that is what counts (1 Corinthians 8:3; Galatians 4:9).
You see us “as dying, and behold, we live” (verse 9). Yes, we die every day. We are crucified with Christ. Some of us are imprisoned and killed. But oh, we live because Christ is our life now, and he will raise us from the dead.
You see us “as punished, and yet [we are] not killed” (verse 9). Yes, we endure many human punishments and many divine chastenings, but over and over God has spared us from death. And he will spare us till our work is done.
You see us “as sorrowful, yet [we are] always rejoicing” (verse 10). Yes, we are sorrowful. There are countless reasons for our hearts to break. But in them all, we do not cease to rejoice.
You see us “as poor, yet [we are] making many rich” (verse 10). Yes, we are poor in this world’s wealth. But we don’t live to get rich on things; we live to make rich on Jesus.
You see us “as having nothing, yet [we are] possessing everything” (verse 10). In one sense, we have counted everything as loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8). But in fact, we are children of God, and if children, then heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). To every Christian, Paul says, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:21–23).

No Place for the Prosperity Gospel

Now step back and remember what Paul said in verses 3–4: “We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way.” He has been removing obstacles to faith and commending the truth and value of his ministry — his life and message. And he has done it in exactly the opposite way than the prosperity gospel does it.

What obstacle has he removed? He has removed the obstacle that someone might think Paul is in the ministry for money or for earthly comfort and ease. He has given every evidence he could to show that he is not in the ministry for the worldly benefits it can bring. But there are many pastors today who think just the opposite about this. They think that having a lavish house, a lavish car, and lavish clothes commends their ministry. That’s simply not the way Paul thought. He thought that such things were obstacles.

“Christ is infinitely precious, more to be desired than any wealth or comfort in this world.”

Why? Because if they would entice anyone to Christ, it would be for the wrong reason. It would be because they thought Jesus makes people rich and makes life comfortable and easy. No one should come to Christ for that reason. Enticing people to Christ with prosperous lifestyles and with chipper, bouncy, lighthearted, playful, superficial banter posing as Christian joy will attract certain people, but not because Christ is seen in his glory and the Christian life is presented as the Calvary road with suffering and many sorrows. Many false conversions happen this way.

So how is Paul commending his ministry — his life and message? Verse 4 says, “As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way.” How? By showing that knowing Christ, being known by Christ, and having eternal life with Christ is better than all earthly wealth and health and comfort. We commend our life and ministry by afflictions. We commend our life and ministry by calamities. We commend our life and ministry by sleepless nights. What does that mean? It means Christ is real to us, and Christ is infinitely precious, more to be desired than any wealth or comfort in this world. This is our commendation: when all around our soul gives way, he then is all our hope and stay.

What does it mean that part of Paul’s commendation to the world is that he was “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (verse 10)? It means that what the world needs from the church is indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow.

Portraits of Joy in Sorrow

Let me move toward a close with two pictures of this “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” — one from Jesus and one from Paul.

When Jesus said in Matthew 5:11–12, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven,” do you think it is random that the next thing he said was, “You are the salt of the earth. . . . You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13–14)? I don’t think it was random. I think the tang of the salt that the world needs to taste, and the brightness of the light that the world needs to see, is precisely this indomitable joy in the midst of sorrow. Joy in the midst of health? Joy in the midst of wealth and ease? Why would that mean anything to the world? They have that. But indomitable joy in the midst of sorrow? That they don’t have. That is what Jesus came to give in this fallen, pain-filled, sin-racked world.

Or consider Paul’s experience of agony over the lostness of his Jewish kinsmen in Romans 9:2–3. Remember that Paul is the one who said in Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” But in Romans 9:2–3, he wrote, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

Don’t miss the terrible burden of the word “unceasing.” Paul is saying, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart because my kinsmen are perishing in unbelief, cut off from the Messiah.” Is Paul disobeying his own command to rejoice always? No. Because he said in 2 Corinthians 6:10, “[We are] sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

Is this not what the world needs from us? Picture yourself sitting across the table at your favorite restaurant from someone you care about very much who is not a believer. You have shared the gospel before, and they have been unresponsive. God gives you the grace this time to plead with them. And he gives you the grace of tears. And you say, “I want so bad for you to believe and be a follower of Jesus with me. I want you to have eternal life. I want us to be with Christ forever together. I want you to share the joy of knowing your sins are forgiven and that Jesus is your friend. And I can hardly bear the thought of losing you. It feels like a heavy stone on my chest. I want you to be glad with me — forever.”

Isn’t that what the world needs from us? Not just a chipper invitation to joy, nor just a painful expression of concern, but the pain and the joy coming together in such a way that they have never seen anything like this. They have never been loved like this. They have never seen indomitable joy in the midst of sorrow, creating compassion. And by God’s grace, it may taste like the salt of the earth and look like the light of the world.

Indomitable Joy in Jesus

So, I say one last time: what the world needs from the church — from us — is indomitable joy in Jesus in the midst of suffering and sorrow.

This was Paul’s commendation of his ministry. May it be your commendation of Christ here at Redeemer Church of Dubai. It is no accident that Paul concluded the greatest chapter in the Bible — Romans 8 — with words that are designed pointedly to sustain your joy and my joy in the face of suffering and loss:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;     we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–39)

Marriage and adventure. How do these fit together? Are they friends or rivals? Does the wedding ring throw wide the door to mission or dead-end in a cul-de-sac of domestic boredom? Does “I do” initiate an epic quest or end one?

As I see it, there are three main views on how marriage and adventure relate: Marriage ends adventure. Marriage completes adventure. Marriage means adventure.

The view we take will shape not only our experience of marriage but also our eagerness to press into the unique callings God gives husbands and wives. The urgency of leading and following often rises or falls on our sense of adventure. The happy hierarchy of head and body thrives on quest.

Marriage’s Adventure

Marriage ends adventure. This is the “old ball and chain” vision of marriage: Bachelordom names a magical land of limitless potential, unfettered by covenant commitments. Single means free. And the wedding ring, though disguised with gold and diamonds, binds in wed-lock. It’s a trap. Tying the knot maroons you in the doldrums of domestic duty.

On this view, the married person spends their life with what-is constantly shackling what-could-have-been. Thus, marriage hamstrings the adventures of life.

Marriage completes adventure. The story repeats ad nauseam. It goes something like this. A hero has an epic quest to fulfill: a dragon to fight, a medal to win, a house to buy, a ladder to climb, a platform to build. A special someone dogs his steps, but romance must wait because she would be a distraction from the mission. Only once the quest concludes does the hero feel accomplished enough to settle down.

Here career, dreams, goals must never submit to the yoke. Marriage competes with adventure; therefore, it can only complete adventure. She is a trophy hoisted after triumph. He is a crown worn in the conquest parade. This view makes marriage not a foundation to build upon but a capstone to decorate. A ring will be a fine addition to the trophy room once the walls are mostly lined.

Marriage means adventure. Perhaps the poet Homer best expressed this view in his Odyssey:

No finer, greater gift in all the world than that . . .man and woman posses their home, two minds,two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory. (6.199–203)

In this magnificent vision, marriage not only means adventure; it is a crucial means of adventure. She is not (merely) a prize but a partner — yes, a crown, but more a companion. She helps him complete the quest. Like Gandalf, marriage pushes couples out the front door onto a road fraught with adventure.

The Quest of the Ring

So, reader, which view of marriage fits the contours of your imagination? Whether single or married, newlywed or decades in, your view of how marriage connects to mission has consequences that will echo through eternity.

The first two views dominate our day. They are everywhere. Yet how great the chasm that lies between those distortions and the Bible’s vision of marriage! In the pages of holy writ, marriage means adventure. God calls it into being for a mission, for work and weal — indeed, for despair to foes and delight to friends.

However, because we are constantly catechized by the anti-adventure views, they likely have shaped your vision of wedlock. So it’s worth clarifying: If marriage is the means of adventure, what is that adventure? What did God make it to do? Consider four distinct (but overlapping) aspects of the mission of marriage.

1. The Grand Adventure

To start, what is the chief end of marriage? What did God make it for? Well, marriage shares the same answer with all things related to man — whether institutions, governments, tools, or art. The chief end of marriage is to help man glorify God by enjoying him forever. Glory by gladness is the Grand Adventure of marriage.

But it’s worth pressing a bit further. How does marriage serve the quest of enjoying God?

First, marriage tells the grand tale of God’s love. Each union of husband and wife is a living picture book of the covenant romance of Christ and his bride (Ephesians 5:22–33). God tells the best stories, and he is not content to tell his greatest tale only once. He will not only be all; he will be all in all. So he retells his grand story through the substory of every (godly) marriage. God wrote the Great Story first. Christ and his bride are the original. And then he created the image of marriage to body-forth to the world the drama of the hero slaying the dragon to win his bride so he can reign with her forever.

“The chief end of marriage is to help man glorify God by enjoying him forever.”

Second, marriage helps free us to enjoy God by making us more holy, that happy requirement for seeing the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). In this, marriage imitates Christ’s aim for his bride (Ephesians 5:25–27). The covenant provides a foundation for stable spiritual friendship in which both man and woman work to uncover what Tim Keller calls “the glory self,” that being God has designed you to become: Godlike, huge in happiness, cloaked in the weighty robes of glory (2 Corinthians 4:16–18).

Thus, faithful marriages provide a taste of Trinitarian fullness — love, holiness, and happiness. Matrimony is a God-given means of going further up and further in.

2. The General Adventure

Under the bright banner of the Grand Adventure, God has commissioned all marriages to undertake two more specific adventures. Let us call the first the General Adventure. God issued this quest to the very first couple:

God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

The scope of this commission takes the breath away! Here we have a cultural mandate that makes all the epics and all the quests of fiction pale in comparison. God’s original mission for us has three components:

Have lots of little ones that bear my image everywhere.
Draw out and enrich the intrinsic goodness of my world.
Be kings and queens over my lesser creatures.

What an adventure!

The man could not complete this mission alone. Fruitfulness requires another. After giving the animals names that fit their natures, Adam knew he needed, and yet lacked, a helper to fulfill God’s massive missive. God then created woman as a helpmate (Genesis 2:19–24). The General Adventure demands both husband and wife, but not in the same way. They are not interchangeable widgets. He is oriented toward the garden, the ground from which he came. She is oriented toward the gardener, the man from which she came. The man needs the help; the woman fits the need (1 Corinthians 11:9). Together, and only together, are they meet for God’s mission. The adventure takes two — both body and head.

3. The Great Adventure

God never revoked this original mission, but when the new Adam came into power, he advanced it with a new commission:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18–20)

King Jesus sends his people on the Great Adventure of declaring his name where they don’t know him, bearing his authority where they oppose him, and showing his beauty where they don’t treasure him. In the wake of his utter triumph over the cosmic powers of darkness and his trampling of death in the dirt, the newly crowned King of kings issues a kingdom manifesto to his citizens. All that the god of this world tempted me with, I have plundered from him. I have dominion. The nations are mine. Go and reclaim them. Summon my elect from the very fringes of the world to come to my wedding feast. Bear much fruit. Wear my name and wield my words.

The General and the Great step in harmony. And though kingdom-minded singles play a crucial role in the Great Adventure (1 Corinthians 7:32), marriage remains God’s normative means of accomplishing both missions. Godly men and godly women make godly marriages with the fruit of godly children. These godly families form godly churches that blossom into godly communities with godly culture. And those godly outposts spread their godly joy over lands and across seas. Thus, the gospel marches forth to the beat of hymns sung at family tables. It advances as faithful couples step across lawns and continents with grace in their blood and joy in their bones.

God loves to make Christ-centered marriages disproportionately fruitful in building his kingdom. Marriage was made for this.

4. The Given Adventures

Under the banner of the Grand, General, and Great, which all marriages share, each individual marriage has a Given Adventure — a particular quest, mission, or endeavor, a unique part God wrote that marriage to play. Far from ending dreams, marriage makes them possible.

My wife and I have a purpose statement that flies over everything we do:

Our purpose is to magnify the glory of the triune God by fully enjoying him and by working for the joy of all people in King Jesus as the only source of truth, goodness, and beauty.

Though you might change our wording, this banner flies over every marriage. It is our attempt to capture the Grand, General, and Great. Yet, that purpose can be fulfilled in a million ways, a billion ways, in as many ways as there are individuals God created. So we had to get more specific. How exactly has God equipped our family — with desires, gifts, and dreams — to fulfill that purpose? What is our Given Adventure? After much prayer, I discerned:

Our happy quest is to wield imaginative language — with all skill and subcreative capacity, in all its forms and with all its enchanting power — to awaken joy as a signpost to the triune God.

In short, we aim to kindle desire for God with fittingly beautiful words. This quest perfectly marries my deep love of words and subcreation with my wife’s storytelling skills and unflagging support. I’ve niggled with the wording (as you’d expect) over the years, but this has been our adventure for creeping up on a decade. God willing, we will pour out the rest of our lives on this path. It is the Manley quest.

Discern Your Quest

Brothers, as the head, you set direction. Have you embraced the Grand, General, and Great Adventures revealed in God’s word? Have you discerned the Given Adventure God has for you? If you’re married, how can she help if you have no holy ambitions to strive for? If you’re not yet married, there is no better way to find a good helpmate than a Given Adventure (and a man on mission is very attractive). If you don’t know your quest, ask God to guide you. What skills (confirmed by others) has he given you to hone and husband? What good desires blaze in your heart?

Treasure these up and try to write a sentence capturing your family mission. Write it in pencil, knowing God may shift it as he will. Let wise counselors speak into it. Test it. Invite your wife to sharpen and beautify it. And then spend your life on that path!

God designed the whole affair of marriage to be wildly, uncomfortably adventurous. As with Gandalf, tales and adventures sprout up wherever godly marriages are found. They always have, and that’s the point.

ABSTRACT: The English language has the most Bible translations available of any language in history. Such variety is due to a number of factors, including differences in theological convictions and translation philosophy, new manuscript discoveries, a desire to reach broader audiences, and the financial needs of publishers. The abundance of translations should primarily make English speakers grateful for such a vast wealth of resources to study God’s word.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Peter J. Gurry (PhD, University of Cambridge), assistant professor of New Testament and director of the Text & Canon Institute at Phoenix Seminary, to explain why there are so many English-language translations of the Bible.

For most Christians, reading the Bible means reading it in translation. That is true today and has been true for most of church history. Most readers are not competent in the Bible’s original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As a result, everywhere the Bible has gone, it has needed to be translated. It is safe to say that no single book has been translated into more languages than the Bible.

While far from the first language to have the Bible, English can boast the most translations. I suspect that no one knows the exact number, but one scholar writing in 1925 catalogued over one hundred English Bible translations in whole or in part up to his time.1 Fast forward to today and one prominent Bible website offers more than sixty choices. This bewildering array of options stems from the wide reach of English, of course, but also from widespread literacy, affluence, and Christian influence found across the Anglophone world.

But if these are the conditions, what are the motivating factors for new translations? Why do translators undertake such a big task? Why do publishers take on the risk of new translations? Why do readers buy new ones?

Complexities of Translation

To understand why there are so many English translations, we need to think first about translation itself. For many, especially those who know only one language, the work of translation may seem like a simple matter of finding the right English word to put in place of a given Hebrew or Greek word. If only things were so simple! In fact, translation can be quite complex.

This complexity is not incidental but essential to the nature of translation. A translator’s work always places him between two authorities, neither of which can talk to the other. The biblical authors cannot write to us in English, and those of us who need translations cannot read them in Hebrew and Greek. Thus, the translator becomes the proverbial servant with two masters. Matthew Reynolds describes translation as an act of mediation and even diplomacy.2 The translator is constantly playing the role of a go-between. When it comes to the Bible, given that one party is God, the stakes are especially high. As a result, Bible readers are naturally interested in having the best Bible translation and can often feel paralyzed by the ever-expanding choices.

But in order to answer the question “Which translation is best?” it’s necessary to understand some of the reasons why we have so many. When we understand the factors that lead to multiple translations, we are in a better position to judge between them. Here I describe five forces that stimulate new translations.

1. Theology

Theology has always been central to Bible translation. Beliefs about what the Bible is, whom it’s for, and how it conveys meaning were central in debates about English Bible translation in the fourteenth century, when John Wycliffe (c. 1328–1384) inspired the translation of the first complete English Bible. At the time, English was viewed by some as an inferior language, one not up to the task. Besides that, giving the Bible to the people was viewed as a gateway to heresies of all kinds. By William Tyndale’s (c. 1494–1536) day, restrictions on Bible translation enacted in response to the Wycliffe Bible were still in force.

The theology of the Reformers supercharged efforts to put the Bible into the vernacular. They found proof in the Bible itself. They noted that God switched languages between the Bible’s two testaments to ensure his word could be understood. It follows that God wants his people to have his word in the language they understand. Tyndale’s work opened the floodgates for a spate of new English Bibles so that, by the time of the King James Version in 1611, there were some half a dozen English translations. We might think we are the first to have a choice, but we are not.

Theological concerns were behind many of these early English Bibles, just as they had been behind the revisions of the very first Bible translation. In the first and second centuries AD, three Jews revised the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. One reason they did so was theological: they wanted to bring the Greek translation into closer alignment with their interpretation of the Hebrew text.

This motive may explain a change they made to a text that has been a perennial site of translation debate. In Isaiah 7:14, the prophet offers a sign to king Ahaz in the form of an ‘almah who gives birth. But what is an ‘almah? The earliest Greek translation (followed famously by Matthew’s Gospel) uses the Greek term for “virgin” (Parthenos). By the second century, this prophecy was a key argument for Christian apologists in their debates with Jews. The Jewish revisers, however, foreclosed this interpretation by using a Greek term that simply means “young woman” (neanis). The Christian response, not surprisingly, was to accuse these early translators of changing the translation to suit their interpretation.3 That may be the first such accusation recorded against a Bible translator; it would not be the last.

Almost two thousand years later, Isaiah 7:14 continues to inspire new translations. Both the NASB and ESV attempted to fix what were viewed as theological problems with the RSV. Prime among them was Isaiah 7:14. The RSV made waves when it was published in 1952 for printing “young woman” and relegating “virgin” to a footnote. This choice (among others) made conservative Christians unhappy, and they panned it. The NASB fixed the problem by revising the older ASV, while the ESV came later and directly revised the RSV.

Thus, from the very beginning, Bible translations have depended on theology — not only to justify Bible translation itself, but also to spur new translations from older ones.

2. Translation Philosophy

This leads to the larger question of a translator’s approach to the task, or what is called translation philosophy. Usually, translation philosophies are placed on a spectrum between word-for-word translations on one end and paraphrases on the other. Translations today use terms like “essentially literal” (ESV) or “dynamic equivalence” (NIV) or “optimal equivalence” (CSB) to explain their translation philosophy. These terms have their uses, and the concepts behind them have a long pedigree,4 but their value is limited. The reason is that meaning (and hence translation) involves much more than just words. It involves features of language like style, register, idioms, wordplays, jokes, and so on.

In English, the words inebriated, drunk, and trashed all can refer to being intoxicated, but their register is different. You would not expect a lawyer in a courtroom to use the word trashed when referring to a client charged with a DUI. For a translator, issues of register, style, and the like require careful attention. As an example, some translations like the CSB and NLT now use contractions like “didn’t” and “won’t” but restrict them to direct speech. I suspect they want the Bible’s characters to use colloquial English but want its narrators to sound more formal.

Terms that are culturally specific present additional challenges. Bible readers today have never seen a leviathan at the zoo; we don’t know who the kinsman redeemer is in our family; we have no idea how much food a shekel can buy or how high 1,600 stadia are. On the other hand, some terms that are easy for us were once difficult for others. We have no problem with the word sandal in the Bible, but William Tyndale’s sixteenth-century readers did because he provides a footnote to explain its meaning at Acts 12:8. Translators face further difficulties with proper names and terms for animals, plants, and diseases since these are often culturally specific. Many scholars believe that leprosy or Hansen’s Disease was not actually known in Bible times, but translators today find it hard to avoid the term leprosy because Bible readers expect it.

These difficulties illustrate why we need more than just the word-for-word/paraphrase spectrum to think of Bible translation. I prefer instead to think in terms of how much a translation tries to bring the Bible’s world into ours. For example, when the NASB capitalizes the pronoun in Isaiah 7:14b as “and she will call His name Immanuel,” it is bringing the Bible into our world since the original Hebrew has no equivalent to capitalization. The NLT does not capitalize pronouns, but it too brings the Bible into our world when it renders the same clause as “She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).” The words in parentheses are not in the original since the name’s meaning is obvious to Hebrew speakers. But the NLT brings the Bible’s world into ours by explaining the name — just as Matthew did (Matthew 1:23).

Different translations bring the Bible’s world into ours in different ways and to different degrees, and it is another reason translations multiply. Translators are constantly trying to improve on what’s available in one way or another. That was true of the Jewish revisers, it was true of the King James translators, and it is true today.

3. Manuscript Discoveries

Behind the issue of how to translate is a more fundamental one: what to translate. Scholars today work from thousands of manuscripts of both the Old and New Testament, many of which have been discovered and studied only since Tyndale’s time. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is the best-known example, but many other manuscripts have been brought to light besides these. As a result, translators sometimes need to update the English Bible to reflect new manuscript knowledge.

This desire to produce a Bible with a better text goes as far back as Origen of Alexandria in the second century AD and is reflected in numerous translation efforts. The Revised Version, published between 1881 and 1885, is known as the first major revision of the KJV, and new manuscript discoveries were a major motivation for it. This resulted in over five thousand textual changes in the New Testament. Today, the results are usually less dramatic, but manuscript discoveries still motivate new translations. The recent revision to the NRSV known as the NRSV Updated Edition (NRSVue) was undertaken partly in order to update its textual decisions.5

Most Bible readers will encounter these changes through footnotes. Such notes were used by many early English Bibles, including the KJV. At James 2:18, for example, the KJV translators note that instead of a person saying, “Shew me thy faith without thy works,” some copies read “by thy works.” Today, English translations follow the first option without any note thanks to the evidence of earlier and better manuscripts. In other places, words have been included or removed or newly marked as uncertain since the time of the KJV.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have been a crucial source of evidence for translators. A striking example comes at the end of 1 Samuel 10, where translators have a major choice to make in whether they follow evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls or from the later Hebrew Masoretic Text. The ESV follows the Masoretic Text, whereas the NRSVue follows 4QSama — the much earlier copy of 1 Samuel from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

ESV:

26 Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went men of valor whose hearts God had touched. 27 But some worthless fellows said, “How can this man save us?” And they despised him and brought him no present. But he held his peace.

NRSVue:

26 Saul also went to his home at Gibeah, and with him went warriors whose hearts God had touched. 27 But some worthless fellows said, “How can this man save us?” They despised him and brought him no present. But he held his peace.

Now Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead.

Manuscript discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls present translators with a choice that goes deeper than translation philosophy. Most textual choices are not nearly this significant, of course.6 But because different translation committees weigh such textual evidence differently, our English Bibles differ, and these differences are yet another reason we have multiple English translations.

4. New Audiences

A fourth reason we have so many English translations today is because they are aimed at different audiences. There is some precedent for this, but the advent of a larger, more affluent reading public means this reason has been supercharged over the last century. Recently, the Wall St. Journal reported a 22 percent surge in Bible sales in 2024 that is partly due to a “proliferation of new editions and innovative designs.”7 Though this refers to new Bible formats and not translations, the same principle applies. Publishers try to reach new audiences with new translations.

The best example is the NIV and the lesser-known NIrV. When the NIV was first published in the 1970s, it was aimed at a seventh-grade reading level. Following its enormous success (it has been, at various times, the bestselling English Bible), the publisher decided to extend its benefits. This led to the New International Readers Version (or NIrV), published in 1996 and aimed at a third-grade reading level. Wherever possible, the sentences in the NIV were shortened and simpler words were used. We can illustrate with Isaiah 7:14 again.

NIV (2011):

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

NIrV (2014):

The Lord himself will give you a sign. The virgin is going to have a baby. She will give birth to a son. And he will be called Immanuel.

The opening verses of Psalm 23 show a similar concern for simplicity and ease.

NIV (2011):

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.     2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,he leads me beside quiet waters,     3 He refreshes my soul.He guides me along the right paths     for his name’s sake.

NIrV (2014):

1 The Lord is my shepherd. He gives me everything I need.     2 He lets me lie down in fields of green grass.He leads me beside quiet waters.     3 He gives me new strength.He guides me in the right paths     for the honor of his name.

These changes are not meant to dumb down the Bible. Rather, as the website explains, they are designed to make the translation especially helpful to young readers, adults learning to read for the first time, those learning English as a second language, and readers with learning disabilities.

5. Money

One final motivation for new translations is financial. Publishing is a fickle business. Major publishers survive the risks in large part thanks to their backlist. These are books that have already come out and that keep selling. They can include everything from coloring books to classic bestsellers like Lord of the Rings. They also include the Bible. In a recent court case, the CEO of HarperCollins, one of the five big US publishing houses, which owns Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, revealed that Bible sales account for $80 million of their business.8 So there is significant potential to be gained if a publisher owns the rights to a popular Bible translation. But there are also no guarantees, and new translations do flop (as the TNIV did). Like other books, a Bible translation is a gamble — sometimes a very expensive one. By the time the NIV was finally released in the 1970s, its editorial costs were estimated to be around $8 million ($40 million in today’s dollars).9

“We English speakers are in an enormously privileged position, for which we should be grateful.”

Translations can make money, but they can also save it. Very few of us notice an important page in our Bibles that precedes Genesis 1:1 because it’s tucked away between the title page and the table of contents. It’s the copyright page. The copyright page says who owns the translation, but it also specifies how much of the translation can be quoted before permission must be sought. My NIV puts the number at 500 verses, whereas my ESV puts it at 250. For most of us, these restrictions never apply and do not matter. But for publishers that sell Bible-study curricula, VBS material, commentaries, and the like, these limits matter a lot. Even when permission is granted, it may come with the need to pay royalties, and these cut into a publisher’s bottom line. So, it is often in a publisher’s own interest to have the rights to their own translation, and many do. Crossway owns the ESV, Zondervan owns exclusive rights to publish the NIV, Broadman and Holman owns the CSB, and Tyndale House Publishers owns the NLT. Each of these has their own set of Bible-study resources that use their own translation. It saves money.

Keep in mind that most publishing is a low-margin enterprise, especially at smaller scale. Aside from the initial cost of producing a translation, several Bible translations have committees that continue to meet after publication. So, the expenses can be ongoing. Some Bible publishers also put a portion of their translation profits into sending Bibles overseas or to translation work in other languages. In any case, financial incentives certainly explain the increase in translation options. As long as people buy new translations, publishers will supply them.

What Version Is Best?

This brings us back to the question of which translation is best. I believe the task of translation shows that this question needs to be qualified: What’s the best translation for whom? Different translations serve different readers. Those new to the Bible can be especially helped by a modern translation that does a lot to bring the Bible’s world into ours. Likewise, those who are new to English will have different needs from those who are not. Churches have additional needs that a translation must satisfy. Those translations with a good literary pedigree are often ideal for public reading. Preachers have special needs given their unique task of expositing the Bible to their parishioners. A translation that constantly brings the Bible’s world into ours can end up getting in the way of good exposition and so neuter the preaching of the word. Likewise, there is an important place for preserving theological terms that have been crucial to the history of Christian doctrine.

These are just some of the considerations that have to be taken into account when choosing a Bible. Thankfully, none of us in the English-speaking world has to limit ourselves to just one translation today, and even longtime Bible readers may find that a second translation injects new life into their Bible reading.

Above all, our response to the many choices in translation should be gratitude. This is the real value of a survey such as this one. It helps us understand the difficulty translators face — and that, in turn, helps us appreciate the fact that we have so many translators and publishers who are so capable and so willing to bring the word of God into words we can understand. We English speakers are in an enormously privileged position, for which we should be grateful.

Audio Transcript

We just started March, and that means we just started reading the glorious letter of Romans together — “the greatest letter that has ever been written in the history of the world by anybody, Christian or non-Christian.” That was your claim last time, Pastor John — high praise from a man who has read and studied this letter countless times over more than sixty years. Coming up this Thursday, we find ourselves reading Romans 5:10 together, and it has led a podcast listener named Bethany, an 18-year-old woman, to write in to ask this sharp question.

“Pastor John, hello, and thank you for this podcast,” she writes. “I was given the great joy and privilege of being born into a Christian home and raised by godly parents, and I went to church every Sunday. I gave a credible confession of faith very young and trusted in Christ for my salvation as long as I can remember. Add all this up, and I’m having a hard time understanding how I was God’s enemy. I know I was God’s enemy, according to Romans 5:10. I guess, what does it feel like to be God’s enemy? I’m trying to understand how he and I were opposed against one another. I know my salvation will be even more glorious if I can understand this better and feel it more deeply.”

Bethany is not alone. I’m in her situation. I have no memory of being God’s enemy. I mean, I’m 79 years old. I was saved when I was 6. I’ve been walking with Christ since then. The basic issue we face is this: Are we going to learn our true condition before Christ and outside Christ from our memory and our experience, or are we going to learn it from the word of God? Are we going to feel it because it’s in the word of God and the Spirit applies it to us? Or are we going to try to dredge up some memory that may not exist at all and try to feel that? I don’t think that’s going to work — and even if it did work, it would be inadequate.

Double Enmity

Bethany refers to Romans 5:10. That’s a good place to start. “If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” So, she’s right to conclude that, before conversion — whatever age — before faith in Christ, we needed to be reconciled to God because we were his enemies.

That phrase “I am his enemy” is ambiguous. It might mean “I’m angry at him” or “He’s angry at me” (or both). I think Bethany is focusing mainly on how she could feel any enmity toward God. She’s never felt any enmity toward God. Neither have I, consciously. I’ve never consciously raised my fist in God’s face, saying, “You’re my enemy” or “I’m your enemy.” So, when she says she has no memory of that, as far as she knows, she means it. And she’s never felt that way toward God. And I think she’s aware that her enmity (that she’s thinking about) toward God is only half the issue of being the enemy of God. The other half is that God has enmity toward us.

Now, she’s not talking about that directly, but she does say, “I’m trying to understand how he and I were opposed against one another.” Ah, she’s onto it, right? That’s right. The reconciliation has to go both ways, both directions, in order for us to have peace with God. He’s angry at her and me and everybody because of our sin, and we don’t like him. That’s our part — we don’t like him. We consider him an intrusion upon our self-determination and our self-exaltation. That’s our enmity toward him. So it goes both ways.

“You can only know the root of your condition outside Christ by learning it from the Bible.”

See these in the Bible so people don’t have to take my word for it. Look at the amazing connection between Romans 5:8 and Romans 5:9. It’s amazing. Romans 5:9 says, “Since . . . we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Okay, so there’s enmity toward us: “saved . . . from the wrath of God.” Our biggest problem is that God is our enemy. He has enmity toward us. He has a legitimate, just, wrathful disposition toward us because we deserve his judgment as God-hostile sinners.

Now, here’s the preceding verse, Romans 5:8: “God shows his love for us . . .” Take a step back and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought he was angry.” “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So, before the problem of our enmity toward God is overcome, while we were still his enemies, God does what must be done in order to remove his enmity toward us by sending Christ. This is what must be done. He sends his Son, Christ, who bears our punishment so that we might be forgiven and justified.

So, God unilaterally — quite apart from anything we do or say or think, or even our existence — on the cross, satisfies his own justice and wrath in the death of Christ so that there is no condemnation toward those who will believe in him.

Different by Degrees

But Bethany’s question is, What about my enmity toward God? I don’t remember ever feeling that. How should I think about it? How should I feel it?

Now, the first part of the answer is that Bethany is only different in degree from the person who was saved at age 35, having had illicit sex over and over, been in jail, done drugs and every other manner of evil you can think of. She’s only different in degree as to whether she or that person could feel enmity toward God.

And what I mean is that that person, looking back, knows a little bit of how bad sin is and what their condition was and would be outside Christ. But the memory of all those outward acts and even the impulses that caused them does not go to the root of the matter. You can only know the root of your condition outside Christ by learning it from the Bible. God must reveal to us the nature and the depth of our corruption and our sinfulness and our enmity to God. Experience can only take us so far, but not far enough.

Now, Bethany surely has been tempted to sin. I assume she’s a human being, right? She has been tempted to sin, and she can imagine some of what her corruption would be like if she gave in to it repeatedly. And that person who was saved at age 35 has a clear sense of what sin is like. But it’s only a matter of degree that separates them because neither of them — none of us — knows the depth of our condition if we don’t learn it from God in the Bible.

Seeing Ourselves in Scripture

Since I think Bethany and I have basically the same issue — namely, a Christian background in which we don’t have any memory of being enemies of God consciously — let me use myself as an example of how I gain and feel a true conception of my condition before I was a believer (say, at age 4 or 5 years old) and what I would be now (at age 79) without Christ in my life. Here’s what I do: I immerse myself in what God says I was, what God says I would be outside Christ. I make the touchstone of my identity outside Christ God’s word, not my memory.

For example, here’s what I preach to myself. Romans 3:9–11: “Both Jews and Greeks are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.’” That’s me: no understanding, no seeking, no desire, no righteousness, under the dominion of sin. That’s me. And I meditate on that.

What is that? What does it look like? What is sin? Romans 1:22–23: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.” They exchanged God for images. Romans 1:28: “Since they did not [approve of having God in their knowledge], God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” Sin is exchanging God for the treasures I prefer rather than God. I prefer to eat of the tree of the garden of Eden. I prefer my way toward money, my way toward power, my way toward fame, my way toward sex, and God is in the way. I don’t like it. I want him out of the way. I want to do what I want to do. That’s sin. I don’t want to be subordinate to any authority outside myself.

That’s what Paul means by enmity toward God. And all of us can feel it crouching at the door. Without the Holy Spirit in Christ, it would take over. That’s me apart from sovereign grace.

What about Romans 8:7? What it adds is that, without Christ, I’m a slave to my arrogance; I’m a slave to my self-determination, my self-exaltation. It says, “The mind [of] the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” And that word cannot is crucial. My condition, apart from sovereign grace, God’s work in my life, is not just that I don’t please God or even that I don’t want to please God, but that my not wanting to please God is so deep I cannot please God. That’s my condition.

Word over Experience

We can only learn that because God reveals it to us in the Bible, not from experience — whether you were saved at 6 or saved at 60. So, Bethany, we’re all in this together. Whoever we are as Christians, we are all seeking to know who God is, what grace is, who we were and would be without him, and what we are by grace. And we can only know these things rightly, deeply, not because of our memory or our experience, but because of God’s word.

There’s a lie we all want to believe — even against all available evidence. It trades on our God-given capacity for hope. It tempts even those with impeccable theology. It lures us in and then leaves us in the lurch. It goes like this: “Life will get easier if I just make it past this current challenge.”

We feel this way about life stages. “If I can just find a romantic partner . . . make it through grad school . . . marry and settle down . . . have children . . . survive the diaper stage . . . survive the terrible twos . . . survive the teen years . . . find a better job . . . retire . . . then, finally, all will be well.” We think this way about temptations. “If I can accumulate enough in my bank account, I won’t be anxious anymore.” “Once I own my own home, I won’t envy what others have.” “After I marry, pornography will no longer be an issue.”

You’ve probably seen medication commercials featuring ridiculously fit and happy older people with silver hair and perfect teeth playing tennis and laughing in a carefree fashion. That’s the lie. It’s not true. In many years of pastoral ministry, I’ve seen numerous people work hard and honor God through their childrearing years and careers only to retire and face increased challenges. Friends move away. Misunderstandings with grown children occur. Spouses die. Medications multiply. Often, retirement isn’t a quiet harbor but the open ocean.

Because the Bible is realistic, almost every page punctures the lie. In particular, the clear-eyed story of Nehemiah reminds us that God’s people face lifelong hardships and temptations. At the same time, Scripture is not a counsel of despair for those in Christ. Like Nehemiah, we can learn to let hard be hard yet also filled with hope. Consider how his story might supply fresh strength for your current season — not some unpromised future one.

Sea of Hardships

Tasked with rebuilding the Jerusalem wall, Nehemiah finds himself surrounded by enemies. They simply will not quit in their efforts to stymie his work. Like Wile E. Coyote, the famous cartoon nemesis of the Roadrunner, the adversaries are unrelenting, undeterred, always trying new schemes. Their initial strategy for hindering Nehemiah is mockery and public shame (Nehemiah 2:19; 4:1–3). When that fails, they try deception, pestering Nehemiah for a private meeting, meaning to harm him (6:1–4). Then, in an open letter (so that the rumor will spread), they mention that he’s rebelling against Persian authority (6:5–7). They try to ruin his reputation (6:10–13) and send more letters to scare him (6:19).

I can imagine Nehemiah saying to himself, “If I just get this wall rebuilt, life will be easier.” But that’s the lie. Because once the wall is completed, the houses of Jerusalem must be rebuilt and the city repopulated (7:4). And, as it turns out, those who fill the city are sinful, which means Nehemiah must respond to continued and complicated crises (see Nehemiah 13). It never stops. God’s people face lifelong hardships and temptations.

John Newton understood this. In his hymn “Amazing Grace,” he proclaimed his confidence that God would be his shield and portion “as long as life endures.” You need a shield only when spears and arrows are flying your way, so Newton clearly believed they’d be in the air as long as he lived. Yes, many “dangers, toils, and snares” were already in the past. But Newton knew that the baseline expectation for God’s people is that more will come. Our only safe haven is heaven, and there’s no heaven on earth. (Not yet, at least.)

“God’s love will outlast every discouragement, fear, anxiety, setback, and temptation we face.”

Yet biblical realism needn’t lead to pessimism or passivity. Despite stiff opposition, Nehemiah and his followers keep on working and complete the wall (Nehemiah 6:15). Despite the continued disobedience of those who returned to Jerusalem, Nehemiah continues to make reforms and call the people back to God (Nehemiah 13). Nehemiah chooses to face real hardships and temptations with energetic hope rather than slack despair. And upon closer inspection, his story also shows us how: by looking up and looking back.

Looking Up

In the midst of unrelenting opposition, Nehemiah repeatedly looks up. He speaks to the God of heaven who is here with him: “But now, O God, strengthen my hands” (6:9). Here’s the first key to joyful perseverance amid pervasive difficulties: look up to God.

Nehemiah is famous for setting his sights heavenward in tight spots. He tells us that, in the intimidating presence of King Artaxerxes of Persia, “I prayed to the God of heaven” (2:4). As he recounts his enemies’ taunts, he bursts into prayer: “Hear, O our God, for we are despised!” (4:4). He’s a shining example of how to look up.

And, of course, our experience of God’s presence is greater than his. We know the Messiah’s name and the details of his story. We’ve seen God’s glory in Jesus’s face. His very Spirit lives inside us, encouraging and emboldening us. We enjoy his continual help. Through him, we possess constant, confident access to the Father. So, ultimately, we don’t need hardships and temptations to end because we have God with us in the midst of them.

Looking Back

Not only does Nehemiah gaze heavenward; he also looks backward. God’s past faithfulness is a second source of indominable hope. My church supports global partners who recently realized that sharing stories of God’s faithfulness on the mission field is noticeably decreasing their anxieties while there. This can be true for us too. As we meditate on God’s help in the past, our confidence in him grows in the present.

Surely, this is one of the reasons for the otherwise baffling inclusion of Nehemiah 7, a long genealogy of the first wave of exiles who had returned to Jerusalem a century before Nehemiah’s day (see also Ezra 2). Why include it here? Because it’s a tangible, specific reminder of God’s meticulous past provision. It fuels hope. Similarly, the people’s celebration of the Feast of Booths (Nehemiah 8) reminds them of what God has already done for them.

We too should look back. “I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands” (Psalm 143:5). Of course, we’re able to ponder thousands more years of God’s faithfulness than Nehemiah could. The reservoir of God’s grace has grown, and that grace now includes Jesus’s life and redeeming work. God’s past work fuels present confidence in the face of future challenges. We press forward by looking back.

Onward

God’s people endure hardships and temptations that will not end before heaven. New difficulties are surely just around the corner for you — only a text, call, or email away. But don’t despair — and don’t pin your hopes on the vain expectation that suffering will cease. There is no paradise here.

Instead, look back and look up. God’s love will outlast every discouragement, fear, anxiety, setback, and temptation we face. Nehemiah shows us how to endure grave challenges with glad hope.

My wife and I knew we were different when we got married, even though public school hadn’t helped us much on that front. Our 1990s and early 2000s society tried to take the edge off our sense of difference, but still we knew.

Clearly our bodies, as male and female, were different. And our instincts, while complementary, plainly differed. Of course, we had differing life experiences and families of origin, and so we exhibited the typical variances between any two humans. But the main differences, the ones that mattered most, and had the most potential, corresponded to one simple yet complex reality: I am a man, and she is a woman. We knew this.

However, looking back now, twenty years later, I’m not sure we yet knew how different we were — on the outside, yes, but even more on the inside, the things you can’t see at a glance. We were not yet deeply aware of the complementary differences God had sown deep into our masculine and feminine souls.

We Know Deep Down

Two decades of adult life have taught us much about God’s powerful dynamic in our human similarities and our male-female differences. As co-heirs in Christ, we stand, side by side, on equal footing before God and at the foot of the cross. Together, as man and wife, we are created, fallen, and redeemed. Oh, what glorious equalities we share as humans and Christians!

And we are clearly different — profoundly different — as male and female, as husband and wife, as head and helper. These differences are features, not bugs. They are not drawbacks to be covered over or collapsed into each other. There is the majesty of the sun and the splendor of the moon. One glory of day, another of night. We need both. Neither is better than the other; both are essential. And these differences — glorious complementary differences — go far beyond emotional intuition, native aggressiveness, how much sleep we need, and how long we can bear up under trying circumstances.

People know that men and women are different. All of us know. Sure, sinners suppress the truth (Romans 1:18–23). Doubtless, many have been deeply deceived, perhaps even choosing the deception one moment at a time for years on end. But we all know. Being male or female, like being made in God’s image, is basic enough, foundational enough, plain enough to the very nature of our world and our own human lives, that we know.

Still, as societal confusion and controversy continue to blur the sense of our God-given complementary differences as men and women, it can be helpful to point out, with the objectivity of Scripture, the traces of what’s been clear from the beginning.

God’s Creative Order

Genesis chapter 2 zooms in on day 6, that climactic day of the creation week, and we learn about how God made man, and find a two-stage sequence: God first forms the man from the ground, then distinctly, at a later time, he builds the woman from the man.

God chooses to create with a plain order. He calls our race “man.” He forms the man first and orients him toward the ground from which he came, to work the garden and keep it (2:15). And God gives him the ground rules:

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (2:16–17)

At this point, then, God introduces man’s need for a “helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18) — and God apparently takes his time. Not only does this create anticipation in the man for this helper; it also teaches a lesson. Then God forms the woman second, orienting her toward the man from which she came (2:22), to help him in God’s calling. The man names her Woman (2:23). They stand equal before God as human (Genesis 1:27–28). And God orders them in marriage as head and helper (2:20).

In 1 Timothy 2:13, the apostle Paul points to this ordered sequence in Genesis 2 as the first half of his reason for why mature Christian men are to be the pastor-elders and authoritatively teach the gathered church: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” God created these equals with an order. They are not the same but different — and these differences are God-designed complements.

Here an exhaustive list of the differences between the man and the woman (and men and women in general) is not necessary or relevant. God has his reasons for these differences — many of which are obvious, many that become plainer the longer we live, and many that remain subconscious for most in this life. But God’s design is intentional, and his order endures. And when we follow his order, we find that a lifetime of happy, even thrilling, discoveries await us. When you walk in light of the truth, lights go on everywhere. But that’s only part of the story.

Disorder in the Fall

Paul gives the second half of his answer (for why pastor-elders should be qualified men) in 1 Timothy 2:14: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Now sin and Genesis 3 come into view.

Paul’s full explanation includes not just the order of creation, but also the (dis)order of the fall. God laid down an order; the serpent subverted it. The word deceive draws in the language of Genesis 3:13, where the woman says, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Paul’s point is not that women are more gullible than men, or more prone to deception. The point is the order: The serpent did not deceive the man. He went to the woman. Satan intentionally undermined God’s order, and the fall was the direct result.

Yet even though the fall of man (and woman) brought God’s righteous curse upon the world, it did not overturn his order. After Adam too has eaten, God comes knocking and asks for the man (3:9), not for his wife, who handed him the fruit (3:6). God again operates according to his order, not according to the serpent’s scheme.

Even through the curse itself, God’s order persists. His curse directed toward the man relates to the ground and his labor. It will take his sweat and overcoming many barriers to be fruitful. Meanwhile, the curse directed toward the woman relates to childbearing and childrearing, to the domestic sphere and the labor of multiplying the race to fulfill God’s mandate. Greater still, the curse will include the sinful desire in woman to control the man, and that he will, in turn, be sinfully domineering toward her (this is the meaning of “desire” and “rule over” in Genesis 3:16; compare with Genesis 4:7). Sin always seeks to destroy God’s order.

Order Restored and Glorified

Remarkably, when we rush forward to the coming redemption — to God himself coming to rescue his people in Christ — his created order is not abandoned in the church age but endures. Not only is the original order restored through Christ’s redemptive work in the church, but now it is glorified, exalted to a new register through life in Christ by his indwelling Spirit.

As man and wife stood before God as equals in Eden, so we stand together, side by side, at Calvary and in the congregation of the church. Among those who have “put on Christ” through faith, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Men and women stand together before Christ, as co-heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7) — glorious equals. Neither man nor woman has any inside track with Jesus.

Yet that does not mean that our God-designed differences go away in Christ. Rather, they are rescued, restored, and glorified. “The husband is the head of the wife,” as he always has been, yet now, he finds his model in Christ: “. . . even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior” (Ephesians 5:23). Whereas sin may lead a husband to lord his authority over his wife, husbands in Christ love their wives and are not harsh with them (Colossians 3:19). As household head, a man owes his wife a special kind of care. Wives, in Christ, take the part of the church: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (Ephesians 5:24; Colossians 3:18).

This brings us back to Paul’s authoritative commentary on Genesis 2–3 for the church age. A team of mature Christian men serve the whole congregation as its pastor-teachers, according to God’s order in creation, now restored in Christ. And the glorious dance of our equality as humans and our differences as men and women, now rescued in Christ, not only gives order to our households and God’s household but also gives life and energy, beauty and power, to all of life, wherever we go and grow as those who image Christ in his world.

As my wife and I, and countless others, have discovered, our differences as man and woman are not less than they appear; they are even deeper. And that’s good. The more we are the same, the less rich an arrangement marriage is. But the more complementary we are, the more marriage becomes a strong and beautiful dance for making much of our God and his Son.

What’s the Difference?

This month at Desiring God, we are celebrating afresh the beauty and power of God’s design for men and women. We believe that sexual complementarity influences every realm of our lives — and we’re happy about how God chose to do it. Thin, narrow, and minimalist are not the adjectives for our complementarity at Desiring God. We love the God-designed differences in men and women, from the beginning, found in our households, celebrated in our churches, and displayed as a diamond next to the dull monotony of the world. We are thick, broad, and maximalist. We don’t stomach God’s design. We delight in it and hope you will too.

To that end, we’ve developed a new series of articles under the banner “What’s the Difference?” In this series, we’ll move through a sequence from our households, to our churches, to society, as we seek to celebrate God’s good design by pointing out what’s the difference — or more precisely, what are some of the countless differences we discern in our world and in ourselves and in Scripture.