Years ago, when I was a new believer in Cameroon, a woman in Nigeria published a testimony about working for the devil. She shared that midnight until 2:00 were the most active hours in the world of darkness. As a result, she encouraged believers to pray warfare prayers during those hours. Unfortunately, her story (and others like it) influenced a generation to have a narrow understanding of both prayer and warfare, restricting it to a couple of hours at night for battling the devil.

While there is nothing wrong with praying from midnight to 2:00 (or any other time of day), to think that those are the most spiritually hostile hours is grossly wrong. Paul teaches to the contrary. Every hour is an hour of war. For believers, war is a way of life. If any Christian is not fighting, that Christian is losing the battle with sin.

We must arm ourselves at all times “in the evil day” (Ephesians 6:13), this present evil age when the god of this world, the devil, constantly raises his claws against the people of God. Every day on earth is a day when evil and the evil one are trying to overcome believers (Ephesians 5:16). Christians are always at war against principalities, rulers, cosmic powers, darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And if all of life is war, we must always be armed and well-clothed for battle. We need armor like the breastplate of righteousness.

What Is the Breastplate?

The breastplate of righteousness is one of several pieces of armor that the church puts on as it engages in spiritual war (Ephesians 6:14). In Isaiah 59, Yahweh presents himself as a warrior King with armor that includes this breastplate:

His own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. (Isaiah 59:16–17)

Yahweh comes as a warrior King to repay evil so that the nations “fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun” (Isaiah 59:19). The Old Testament knows only one warrior who clothes himself with the breastplate of righteousness to war against evil for his glory (see also Isaiah 11:5). He fights for his fame.

When Paul draws from this Old Testament imagery of the warrior God and applies it to the church, he shows that the church now represents Yahweh as his army. In Christ, the church has become like her God, waging war against evil with the same armor as her warrior King. In putting on the same attire as Yahweh, Christians not only fight for Yahweh and his fame, but we also fight in the form of our God.

In Ephesians 6, the breastplate of righteousness is an active, Spirit-filled pursuit of righteousness as opposed to imputed righteousness. That Paul commands us to “put on” the breastplate shows it is our responsibility to wear the attire of our warrior King. If it were imputed righteousness, Paul would not have charged us to put it on. Rather, God declares us righteous the moment we believe, and then we grow in Christ by putting on the breastplate of righteousness.

The Christian’s new self was “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). New creations, like the earth when God created it, bear fruit, the fruit of righteousness (Ephesians 5:9). As God’s new creation, by faith in Christ, we live and grow in righteousness. The breastplate of righteousness, therefore, is a lifestyle fueled by faith in Christ Jesus.

How Do We Put On Righteousness?

Paul calls us to continually and progressively put on the breastplate of righteousness. But how do we do it? We do so by faith. Paul says, “In all, taking the shield of faith” (Ephesians 6:16, my translation). The word “all,” in the immediate context, has the pieces of armor in view. Thus, Paul tells us how we put them all on. We put on the breastplate of righteousness by faith in Christ who is our righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). The “faith” Paul has in mind in Ephesians 6:16 is our present trusting in Christ and his work of redemption.

“In Christ, the church has become like her God, waging war against evil with the same armor as her warrior King.”

One way we express that faith (and so put on righteousness) is through prayer. Paul tells us to put on the armor, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18). How does praying relate to putting on the breastplate of righteousness? We actively put on the breastplate by asking God, our Righteous Warrior, to grow us in righteousness. When we are tempted to sin, we cry to him. When our faith is weak, we cry to him. In dependence on him, by faith, we become more like him.

Taking up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, is also a means by which we put on the breastplate of righteousness. In the Scriptures, we see God’s glory (1 Samuel 3:21), and in seeing God’s glory, we become progressively like him (2 Corinthians 3:18). So, read to be righteous. If you neglect the word of God, you cannot wear this breastplate.

We also put on this breastplate of righteousness together with the church. The call to clothe ourselves like our warrior King and engage in war against evil is a corporate call. The church is the army of God. You cannot separate yourself from the church and expect to put on the armor and fight. Although our individual pursuit of righteousness is necessary, we are far stronger together. You cannot war alone. You need your local church in order to stand in these evil days.

Give Evil No Opportunity

In this spiritual war, Satan aims to hinder us from glorifying God and imaging him with lives of righteousness. He hinders our pursuit of holiness because he hates the glory of God.

One might ask, How does the breastplate protect us against the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, and spiritual forces of evil? When believers engage in sinful behavior, they open the door for the devil to have influence. Paul calls the church to “give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). When we give him an opportunity with our sin, we allow Satan to exert his destructive, God-dishonoring influence in the world. We allow him to hinder our efforts to glorify God in ministry, missions, marriage, and life. Our sins also give the devil the occasion to slander the church and her Messiah (1 Timothy 5:14).

When we actively submit to God, however, trusting God’s power for salvation from sin in the gospel and pursuing righteousness, we resist the devil and drive him away. He cannot devour our faith (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8).

When Satan Tempts Us to Despair

When we fail to put on the breastplate (as we all do), the cross of Christ is our hope. Because Jesus died for our sins, because Jesus is our righteousness, we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us and gave himself up for us (Romans 8:37). So, we can sing in our failures,

When Satan tempts me to despair,And tells me of the guilt within,Upward I look, and see him there,Who made an end of all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died,My sinful soul is counted free;For God, the Just, is satisfiedTo look on him and pardon me.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, not the satanic condemnation, and see your righteousness and perfection in him. In the strength of what he has accomplished for you, get up, dust off the filth, and put on the breastplate of your increasing righteousness. None of Satan’s arrows will be able to pierce your heart.

Audio Transcript

This week in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, we read together Psalm 79. So, this question — from Kimberly in Houston, Texas — is timely. She writes in to ask this: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast. In Psalm 79:9, the psalmist prays like this: ‘Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!’ I want to pray like this. But how? How do I pray for things that would benefit me and the people I know and love and would also glorify God at the same time in answer to those prayers?

“It seems very Christian Hedonistic. We get the help; he gets the glory. Except I just don’t know how to frame my praying like this. I thought it would be easy until I tried to do it. It’s actually very hard and limiting because I’m finding that most of my prayers have no conscious relation to God’s glory. Can you teach me to pray the Psalm 79:9 way?”

Well, Kimberly has one problem already solved, which many people stumble over. And the problem is expressed in the question, “How do I pray for things that would benefit me and glorify God at the same time?” And many people stumble over that tension as though it were a tension. For me, for God — which is it?

But Kimberly knows there doesn’t have to be a tension, because she says, “We get the help; he gets the glory.” So, she’s got that one wonderfully, biblically figured out, which is exactly what Psalm 50:15 says: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” We get the deliverance; he gets the glory. That’s what it says. If we keep in mind that the giver gets the glory, then there doesn’t have to be a tension between our asking for what we need and our asking that God be glorified.

“There doesn’t have to be a tension between our asking for what we need and our asking that God be glorified.”

But Kimberly says that she does not have an answer to the question (or the problem), “I just don’t know how to frame my praying like this. I thought this would be easy until I tried it. It’s actually hard and limiting because I’m finding that most of my prayers have no conscious relation to the glory of God.” So, let me see if I can make a few biblical observations. I think I have five that might reorient Kimberly’s (and all of our) thinking so that it feels natural that every request we make in prayer relates to the glory of God.

1. Remember why God does everything.

So, here’s number one. Never forget that God does everything for his own name’s sake — that is, for his glory. He does everything for his glory. He delivers us for his name’s sake (Psalm 79:9). He blots out our transgressions for his own sake (Isaiah 43:25). He leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). He does not forsake his people for his great name’s sake (1 Samuel 12:22). He saves us for his name’s sake (Psalm 106:8).

It helps to see our prayers as fitting into this overarching, global, historical purpose of God in everything that he does. He does all that he does for his name’s sake — that is, to display and communicate his beauty, his worth, his greatness, his glory. So, if we have just an overarching, pervasive mindset that God does all he does for his glory, then our prayers assume a new fitness as we think that way, as we dream that way, and as we ask that way.

2. Pray beneath God’s righteousness.

Number two, this unwavering commitment of God to uphold the glory of his name is at the heart of what is his righteousness. We see that in Psalm 143:11: “For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life!” So, we pray like that: “For your name’s sake, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!” So, God’s acting for his name’s sake and his acting in righteousness are parallel. They explain each other; they interpret each other.

And when you think about it, this makes really good sense. What is the ultimately right thing for God to do when God has no book to consult outside himself about what’s right and wrong? He only has himself to consult. There’s just God. There’s nothing else before he creates anything. He is the measure of all that is right. The right thing to do, I would argue, is for God to always act in accord with the infinite worth of his own name, his own being. I think that’s the essence of his righteousness. It’s right for him to always act in accord with the infinite worth of his name.

And I think that helps us in our praying, because we always want God to do the right thing in answer to our prayer. “Do the right thing” — which will mean, “Act for the sake of your name.” That’s the ultimately right thing for God to do.

3. End your prayers in Jesus’s name.

Number three, keep in mind what it means to pray in Jesus’s name. I used to say to my kids when they were growing up and they’d end a prayer with a throwaway sound, “In Jesus’s name” — I said, “Let’s just pause here. That’s not a throwaway phrase.” It may be that one of the reasons we stumble over seeking God’s glory in our prayers is that we forget what we’re saying when we pray, “In Jesus’s name, amen.”

In John 14:13, Jesus taught us to pray in his name. To pray in Jesus’s name means that it is his death in our place that makes it possible for God’s wrath to be removed and God’s grace to pour down all over us in answer to our prayers. So, Jesus’s name refers to the basis or the foundation of every single gracious answer to prayer. “In Jesus’s name” means, “because Jesus died for me and purchased the grace of every answered prayer.” No cross, no answered prayer. But “in Jesus’s name” also means that the giver gets the glory. If he paid for every answered prayer, he gets the glory for every answered prayer.

So, let the meaning of “in Jesus’s name” have its full effect as you speak it. End every prayer with the thought, “You, Jesus, are my only hope for any gracious answer to this prayer. And when it comes, I will be glad for you to get the glory.”

4. Let the Lord’s Prayer shape yours.

Number four, keep in mind that there is a reason that the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). Hallowed means “sanctified” — that is, set apart as sacred, holy, precious, valuable, infinitely worthy of all our admiration and desire and praise. It would not be far off to translate it, “Glorified be your name,” “Admired be your name,” “Praised be your name,” “Treasured be your name.” Which means that, every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are asking, first and foremost, that the Lord would cause his name to be glorified.

“If Jesus paid for every answered prayer, he gets the glory for every answered prayer.”

You don’t have to add that later as you just stick on an artificial, “Be sure you get glory from my prayer, Lord.” You began with it. Jesus begins with it. “Lord, my heart’s number-one desire is that your name be glorified in every answer to my prayer.” So, let the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer remind you that the first concern of every prayer is that God be glorified.

5. Pray with one main passion.

Finally, number five, whether you say it out loud or not, let every request that you make in prayer be like Paul’s desire in Philippians 1:20, where he said, “It is my eager . . . hope” — and, thus, you could say, “It is my prayer” — “that . . . Christ [be magnified or glorified] in my body, whether by life or by death.”

In other words, even if you don’t say it out loud, let your whole mindset in prayer be this: “Lord, I pray that you would deliver me from my enemies and let me live another day that I might serve you. But whether I live or die, the main passion of my heart, with the apostle Paul, is that you would be magnified in my life, whether I live or whether I die.”

So, my prayer is that these five observations from Scripture will help us all to build into the mindset of our prayer a constant desire, a primary hope, that God be glorified however he answers our prayer.

Some truths about God we receive into our minds as we might receive a houseguest, expecting them to behave nicely and generally keep the furniture in place. But then, sooner or later, we hear the sounds of drills and saws. We feel the rumble of a sofa being dragged across the floor. And we discover that we have welcomed not a houseguest but a construction worker.

One such truth, for many of us, is the sovereignty of God. That God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11) struck me, at first, as both biblically plain and experientially sweet. I became a Calvinist almost without realizing it. But then, in time, no truth caused me more mental angst, and even anguish, than this doctrine of God’s total, unstoppable sovereignty. I had imagined myself the calm host of this truth, until my mind became a construction zone.

“Over creation, over history, and over hearts, God reigns.”

Many could testify to a similar experience of mental renovation. Open the door to God’s sovereignty, and walls of supposed rationality may collapse. Stairways of instinct may be turned right around. A whole new floor of possibility may be added. You will emerge “renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23), but the process may sometimes feel like a hammer blow.

How Sovereign Is He?

Whatever place God’s sovereignty has in our present mental framework, we may find help from Acts 4:23–31, a passage that has renovated many minds. Perhaps nowhere else in Scripture do we get such a sweeping sense of God’s sovereignty in so small a space.

The early church prays, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them . . .” (Acts 4:24). Their “sovereign Lord” is none other than the sovereign Creator of Genesis 1: star-speaker, mountain-maker, ocean-carver, creature-crafter. And as the rest of Scripture celebrates, the same God who spoke the world into being goes on speaking, upholding “the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). His sovereignty over creation continues every second. Not a blade of grass grows without him saying so.

But his sovereignty doesn’t end with creation. “Sovereign Lord . . . who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain?’” (Acts 4:24–25). The events of Good Friday may have seemed to some like a chaotic tragedy, like innocence caught in the death gears of political corruption, but the believers say, “No, the death of Christ fulfilled the story of David’s ancient psalm. For a thousand years, the threads of history have been running toward the cross.” History, to them, was prophesied, predestined, planned (Acts 2:23; 4:28).

And not just the events of history, but even the desires and impulses of human hearts. “Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28). Why did Judas betray his Lord? Why did Herod mock the King of kings? Why did Pilate, knowing his duty, let justice be trampled by the raging mob? On one level, because Judas wanted money, because Herod “was hoping to see some sign” (Luke 23:8), because Pilate feared man. These were “lawless men” (Acts 2:23), fully responsible for their sins. But on another level, on the ultimate level, they acted as they did because this is what God had predestined to take place.

Here, then, is the sweep of God’s sovereignty in the space of a few verses. Over creation, over history, and over hearts, God reigns. And such a reign cannot help but renovate our minds.

Renovation of the Mind

One of the marvelous features of Acts 4:23–31 is that these believers not only affirm God’s exhaustive sovereignty, but they also teach us how to apply it. And oh, how we need such teaching. Countless errors creep into minds and churches when we take true doctrine from Scripture without also allowing Scripture to guide our applications. And few doctrines are more prone to misapplication than the sovereignty of God.

The prayer of Acts 4, repeated, internalized, embraced, would guard us from a dozen dangers and keep us on God’s level path, even if the process brings pain. For truth can indeed seem “painful rather than pleasant” for a time. But like God’s fatherly discipline, “later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

Here, then, are three new rooms (among others) God’s sovereignty builds into the minds of those who welcome it.

1. God is sovereign — so pray boldly.

Remarkably, the high sovereignty we encounter in Acts 4 comes to us not in a treatise, a confession, a debate, or even a sermon, but a prayer. While some hear of sovereignty and wonder what difference their prayers could make, the early church received sovereignty as a reason to pray. Here, they kneel before a “sovereign Lord” (Acts 4:24); they plead beneath his providence.

God’s sovereignty rightly communicates something of his transcendence, his highness and holiness. But the believers in Acts 4 know something else about God: in his transcendence, he remains deeply personal with his people. He speaks and listens, invites us to pray and responds to our prayers — all while somehow weaving everything into his “definite plan” (Acts 2:23).

Rightly understood, faithful prayer depends on both God’s transcendence and his nearness. If God were only transcendent, he wouldn’t bend to hear our prayers; if he were only personal and near, he wouldn’t be able to answer our prayers. But if God is both transcendent and personal, mighty and near, then he can both hear our petitions and act. We don’t need to know exactly how he sovereignly folds our prayers into his plans. It’s enough for us to know that he does.

2. God is sovereign — so take action.

The early believers were heirs, as we are, to Jesus’s promise to build his church (Matthew 16:18). As the kingdom spreads throughout the book of Acts, they know they are not the ones spreading it, not ultimately. Such expansion was the work of the risen Jesus, who had poured his Spirit upon his people (Acts 1:1, 8). Seated upon his throne, he was sovereignly fulfilling his promise to build the church against the gates of hell.

But the church did not for that reason grow passive or complacent. They did not merely wait and watch the Holy Spirit act. At Pentecost, Peter gets up and actually preaches (Acts 2:14). Before the council, Peter and John take a breath and actually obey God rather than man (Acts 4:19–20). And when persecuted, the church prays for boldness and actually continues “to speak the word of God” (Acts 4:31). They trusted God would sovereignly fulfill his promises — and then they acted as if he just might do so through their efforts.

For these believers, a seemingly closed door (“Speak no more to anyone in this name,” Acts 4:17) was no reason to stand back and watch; it was reason to pray for boldness, stand up, and turn a handle. They trusted that the same “hand” that governed history was with them still, ready to “stretch out” not before, but precisely “while” they went forth and spoke (Acts 4:28, 30). So, as you stand before some opportunity for the gospel, even if many obstacles stand in the way, take courage from God’s sovereignty and act.

3. God is sovereign — so draw near.

Amid their affliction, we might have expected the believers to address God as something other than “sovereign Lord” — perhaps “sympathetic Lord” or “merciful Lord” or “loving Lord.” These titles are certainly appropriate, and Scripture proposes them to the suffering elsewhere (Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 1:3). But this time, in their pain, these Christians drew near to the sovereign Lord. They did so for at least two reasons.

First, they knew that only a sovereign God could take the wrongs done against us and turn them for our good. Sympathy, mercy, and love are precious qualities in our God, but their preciousness runs thin if he cannot actually do something about our pain. But oh, how he can.

“In his sovereignty, he became a Lord with scars.”

The God we serve was able to take the worst moment in the history of the world and turn it into a moment of eternal remembrance (Acts 4:27–28). And the early church knew that if God could do that at the cross, then he could do it anywhere and everywhere for anyone, no matter how black the sorrow or deep the loss. As on the world’s worst Friday, he can take our most shattered days, rearrange the pieces, and make them spell good.

Then, second, who is this “sovereign Lord”? He is not only the God who turned such a Friday good; he is the God who felt this Friday’s sharpest grief. In his sovereignty, God could have stayed aloof from us, working out his plan from his high throne. But he didn’t. Instead, in his sovereignty, he put on flesh and bone. He took the dark prophecies of the Messiah’s sufferings and laid them on his own human shoulders. He received the whips and the nails and the thorns. In his sovereignty, he became a Lord with scars. And therefore he is, and ever remains, the strongest refuge for suffering saints.

Receive, then, this renovating doctrine of God’s unstoppable sovereignty. Watch how it inspires your prayers, emboldens your witness, and then, in the pit of your deepest pain, leads you to the one who once died under sorrow, and now lives forever as Lord over it all.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. We hope you’re reading the Bible with us this year and benefiting from the discipline. We’re using the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. And if you are reading along with us, you may already know that today’s scheduled reading includes 1 Corinthians 6:12–20, a key text on how we glorify God with our bodies.

How do we steward this body for God’s glory? Specifically, we have a lot of questions about caffeine and energy drinks, like this email today from a listener named José. He writes in to ask this: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. Caffeine, and specifically energy drinks, are controversial in our youth group. As someone who likes them, I was wondering if there are any negative effects or reason to not drink them. They help me focus and have energy during my work shift. I only drink one every two or three days, but I would like to have some spiritual insight in order that I may run this race without being slowed down.”

And he ends his email with a smile emoticon. Pastor John, how should we think about energy drinks, and how would we know if we are abusing our bodies with caffeine?

Well, it might be helpful to take our starting point from Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians about how he navigates the whole area of appetites — whether food or energy drinks or sex — and what foods mean to Paul, what he takes into his body.

God Cares About the Body

So, here’s the pivotal text for me. It’s 1 Corinthians 6:12–13:

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated [and I would say, or mastered, or ruled, or enslaved] by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” — and God will destroy both one and the other.

Now, let me pause there and say that there’s a lot of controversy around what in Paul’s chapter here are slogans from his adversaries in Corinth and what are his own words. So, it might be a slogan: “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.” And so, they’re justifying all kinds of things. But whatever the case is on that point, Paul’s point becomes clear in what follows. Here’s what follows:

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (1 Corinthians 6:13–15)

So, clearly, the upshot of those last couple of lines is this: “The Lord is for the body, the body is for the Lord, the Lord will raise the body, and we are members of Christ even in our bodies.” In other words, the body really matters. So, the body matters to God morally. And, in particular, foods matter and sex matters. And so, the guidelines he gives matter. And what he says is this: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I [wouldn’t want to] be dominated by anything.” And then he adds, “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

Three Guiding Questions

So, here’s my paraphrase for José:

“Energy drinks are lawful for me, but are they helpful to my real advantage?” And I’ll come back to that.
“Energy drinks are lawful for me, but do they dominate (or master or enslave) me?” I’ll come back to that one.
“Energy drinks are lawful for me, but does my drinking of them build up? Does it build up my faith? And particularly, does it build up the faith of others?”

So, let me just give a thought about each of those questions that might help him navigate whether he uses them and how frequently he uses them.

1. Do energy drinks really help me?

“All things are lawful, but are they helpful — that is, to my real, deep advantage?” That’s the meaning of the Greek word: “to my advantage.” This is really part of a much bigger issue, isn’t it, of the proper use of not just caffeine but other stimulants, medications — Ritalin, Adderall, antidepressants, and so on.

So, let me just give one crucial guideline that I think is implied in Paul’s wording, “Are they truly helpful? Do they help me go after my deepest advantage?” And that would be this; this is my guideline: “Are energy drinks, or whatever I’m taking, masking deeper problems that I’m not dealing with, because I’m masking them, or are they helping me really address and be freed from the deeper problems that I may have?”

“Are energy drinks, or whatever I’m taking, masking deeper problems that I’m not dealing with?”

I think that’s the crucial question when it comes to the kinds of medications or stimulants that we take. Are we hiding from our hearts? Are we hiding from sins? Are we hiding things that ought to be dealt with, and this is just a superficial overlay? If José or any of us is masking deeper problems with stimulants, then they’re not being used as a gift from God for our good; they’re being used as a flight from truth and from the good that God wants to do deeper down. So, that’s my note on the first paraphrase.

2. Do energy drinks enslave me?

“Do they master me? Do they enslave me?” Why would that matter to Paul? Why does he say that? Why should it matter to us? Well, it should matter because we have one Master, who bought us at the price of his blood. We do not belong to ourselves, but to him. He calls us to live as free people, not enslaved people.

It says in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” So, anyone who uses coffee, or soda, or energy drinks, or other kinds of stimulants or medication should ask, “Am I dominated by this? Am I mastered by this? Am I controlled by this? Am I living consciously as Christ’s freedman? Am I magnifying the price that he paid to set me free for him?”

It says in 2 Corinthians 5:15, “He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Are we magnifying his mastery over us or living under another master? That’s the second issue that I think he should take into consideration.

3. Do energy drinks build up?

Do energy drinks build up? “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things build up.” Why does Paul shift our focus? This is a really profound ethical question in the New Testament. Why does Paul shift our focus from what is lawful — he says, “All things are lawful” — to what builds up?

Now, this is huge. In Christ, we have died to the law. Romans 7:4: “You . . . have died to the law through the body of Christ.” And “we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6). The problem, then, with deciding what’s right and wrong about energy drinks is that you could obey a law without love, without giving a hoot about whether you’re building anybody’s faith. And so, it is not adequate to have an external rule solve this problem. Paul wants to go deeper.

“The reason Christians are set free from the law is not that we might become lawless, but that love would hold sway.”

The reason Christians are set free from the law is not that we might become lawless, but that love would hold sway. “To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ)” (1 Corinthians 9:21). So, his freedom with regard to the law was being governed by another law, which he called “the law of Christ.” And what’s that? Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Or Galatians 5:14: “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

So, when Paul says to José, or me, or you, or anybody else, “Energy drinks are lawful, but do they build up?” he means, “Be sure that your heart is set on the good of others and that your example to them and your choices are aiming to build people up in faith — that is, helping them trust Jesus and treasure Jesus and honor Jesus above all things.”

Guidelines for Consumption

So, here are my three summary guidelines for José and me.

Are they truly helpful? Are energy drinks truly helpful? That is, are they masking problems that I need to deal with or helping me deal with them?
Are they dominating me, mastering me, and obscuring that Jesus is my real master?
Am I using them in love? Am I building others up? Am I seeking to build my own faith and the faith of others?

Super helpful paradigms here, Pastor John. Thank you for another application of 1 Corinthians 6:12–13. Before we go, I think we all want to know: Do you yourself use energy drinks?

I have a box of energy drinks in my office. I probably don’t use them quite as often as José. He said every two or three days. And what I do is that, if I’ve got a pressing task and I cannot stay awake, yes, I’ll go there. But that box that I buy at ALDI — you can get them at ALDI real cheap — lasts a long time.

But I mean, a question like this helps me keep my finger on the pulse of whether I’m defaulting to an artificial stimulant because I’m so proud I won’t get enough sleep. That’s what I mean by masking. If my real problem is that John Piper doesn’t have the discipline to go to bed at night and therefore gets six hours instead of eight hours of sleep, and therefore he’s always falling asleep at his tasks, and thus he resorts to an artificial stimulant, that’s masking, that’s hiding, that’s running away from God, and it’s pride.

This past summer, a giant deposit of phosphate rock was discovered in southwest Norway. Why does that matter? Well, this one area in Norway now “contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years.” A mining company discovered the jackpot of “up to 70 billion tons of the non-renewable resource [phosphate], . . . a key component for building green technologies” that “currently faces significant supply issues.” Supply issues no more. And just two months later was announced the discovery of 40 billion tons of lithium found inside the McDermitt Caldera, a supervolcano on the Nevada-Oregon border here in the States. That discovery sparked headlines like this one: “Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found.”

These are jackpots for the future of solar and battery power. And they should feed our worship. But they typically don’t. Instead, we are conditioned to see headlines and go man-centered (“This is all corporate greed!”). Or we go Luddite (“This is all of the devil — I’m ignoring it!”). Or we go political (“Electric vehicles are a liberal fad!”). Or we go greedy (“How do I get stock in this!?”). Our minds don’t naturally move from mining discoveries to the Creator. And they will not, without a reshaping of the heart first.

And so now most of us find it easier to celebrate God’s glory in unseen, spiritual realities. By faith, we see his glory in the gospel and in our Intercessor, Christ, our ascended and enthroned Savior in heaven, interceding for us right now. Glorious! And we easily celebrate God’s glory in untouched creation, too. Mountains, oceans, beaches, the northern lights, and the Milky Way galaxy on a dark night. But when it comes to the elements buried deep inside the earth that we excavate and make into shiny new things, God’s glory diminishes. Deposits of phosphate rock and lithium are ho-hum. And by the time we take those materials and make batteries and solar panels out of them, for many believers, God is rendered irrelevant.

A Nation-Sized Gift

The Bible gives us new eyes to see the material world around us in places like Deuteronomy chapter 8. Deuteronomy 8:1–10 is where I want to go this morning. Here Moses shapes the hearts of God’s people, getting them ready to live fruitfully in the promised land. They are a people redeemed from a 430-year bondage in Egypt straight into a 40-year desert wandering. A hard life. But now God’s people are being readied to enter the promised land. A new land. A good land, furnished with everything they could possibly need, even for their future innovations. But their hearts are not yet ready.

So, we’re simply going to walk through the text, beginning in verse 1, where Moses says,

The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. (8:1)

Lasting life for true obedience. That’s the deal. A verse that beautifully sets up the gospel and the obedience of Christ. But for now, if Israel upholds their end of the covenant, God promises that his covenant people will flourish in this new land. They will live and multiply. They will become a strong nation.

The small-cap Lord frames everything else we will study. The great “I am.” The great all-sufficient, self-sufficient “I am who I am.” This self-sufficient Lord promises to give his people the promised land, a promise repeated 23 times in Deuteronomy alone. This sworn land is fundamental to their national identity. This land is their national identity.

And while they will flourish if they obey, the land itself is pure gift. The Lord made the world from nothing. He laid the foundations of the world. Before any creature existed, God prepared this ground for his people. Pure gift. Not a payment for holiness. In chapter 9, this point will be made very clear. Israel is not earning this new land by its self-righteousness. It comes as a gift.

“See beyond man. Marvel at the Maker of our makers.”

This promised land belongs to the Lord. He designed it. He owns it. He’s giving it as a gift of love. Israel will take possession of it by faith and flourish in it by obedience. So Israel is warned. Don’t think that you’re morally superior to all the people who lived on the land previously to you. This land is a perpetual reminder of God’s abundant kindness to undeserving sinners, the lesson they should have learned in the desert.

Testing Hearts Through Stomachs

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. (8:2)

For forty years, God has been humbling his people. Bringing them low. Testing them. Because when you are brought low, your true self comes out. Pressure squeezes out what is inside the heart. So, God sends adversity to prove the faith of his people. Like a furnace that burns away whatever is trivial and false and fake, God “tests hearts” (Proverbs 17:3). Testing proves our trust in God. Do we really trust God or not? This whole text is about the heart. So, God works in the hearts of his people, humbling them, even down to their daily food.

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know . . . (8:3a)

Food’s hard to find in the desert. Manna was a miracle food. It looked like coriander seed and appeared in the desert, on the ground, every morning for forty years. God’s people woke up, gathered it daily, ground it up, and boiled manna cakes — cakes that tasted oily. And a little like honey. Not bad actually.

So, where’d this daily manna come from? No one knew. It was a miracle food from God. “The grain of heaven” made into “the bread of the angels” and eaten “in abundance” (Psalm 78:24–25). A gracious, sustaining gift from God that was sweet and pleasant. A daily gift to prove a bigger point:

. . . that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (8:3b)

A glaring contrast. Our hungry mouths are needy. God’s mouth sustains all things. Farmers don’t keep us alive. Safeway or Costco or Walmart doesn’t keep us alive. We are kept alive by divine miracle. Manna was a miracle food to remind Israel, and to remind all of us, that life is a sovereign miracle. If you are breathing right now, it’s because God says, “Live!” And so we live! Groceries are just a means he uses. Manna is just a means. He cares about the means, but the means point to him.

The first cause of our life is not what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of his mouth. God says, “Live!” And by it, he upholds our lives “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). By miracle. One of many tangible miracles.

Providence and Preparation

Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. (8:4)

Forty years in the desert, wearing the same old clothes, same sandals. They never wore out. God involved himself down to the level of how fast their clothes wore out! Amazing providence on display down to the most mundane material provision of Israel’s life. Footwear. God’s generosity in the most basic provisions.

Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. (8:5)

God has brought discipline — training human behavior. For forty years in the desert, God was disciplining his people, resetting their behaviors, and preparing their hearts for a new home. Preparing them to trust and obey him in a materially prosperous land. Why?

So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. (8:6)

The basic point of verses 2–6 is this: arrogance is unfitting for people about to inherit the gift of God’s land. For forty years, God was humbling his people, testing their hearts, and training their gratitude for a good land. And all this prep builds up now to the promised land itself, and that’s where I want to focus. So, what’s so special about this land?

The Good Land

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land . . . (8:7a)

The Lord is bringing them. God’s people are being led by the hand toward a gift. Have you ever bought someone a gift so big you couldn’t wrap it up? What do you do? You blindfold them and lead them to the gift by the hand. That’s God here. He’s leading his people by the hand to the gift of his land. Again, his kindness frames this entire story.

Not just any land. “A good land.” That’s its name. We typically call it the promised land. You could literally call it “the good land.” It has everything they will need to flourish. The land is useful and productive. The land is abundant and beautiful. And that means, of course, for any desert people, water:

. . . a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills . . . (8:7b)

The good land is rich with water flowing deep under the ground. Water breaks out from deep springs into fountains and flowing rivers, and God made it this way. Long ago he cut deep fountains into his creation. Descriptions of flowing water recall God’s original work. Into the promised land, God pre-cut channels into the rock for fresh water to flow. Long ago, this land was readied for God’s thirsty people, before God’s people even existed. And where water flows, grains and fruit abound.

. . . a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates . . . (8:8a)

Remember when the spies took their first peek into the promised land? The evidence they took back was grapes, pomegranates, and figs. What more do you need, right? A land of amazing and delicious fruits. Fruits to make jams and wines flow like rivers.

. . . a land of olive trees . . . (8:8b)

Not just olives — literally, “oil-rich” olives. The best olives. This land flows with olive oil. Oil for worship sacrifices. Oil to anoint. Oil for cooking and baking. Oil for skin care and hygiene. Oil for medicine to treat wounds. Oil to fuel lamps and give light. Olive oil was abundantly useful for all of life, and it was already there for God’s people.

. . . and honey . . . (8:8c)

A land of honey. The land flows with milk and honey. And you cannot have honey without bread.

. . . a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing . . . (8:9a)

That’s the punch line. It’s the chief characteristic of the promised land itself: here, all scarcity and all shortage is completely negated. There’s no lack here. Why? Because the land is loaded with everything you could materially imagine. God is comprehensively aware of the entire scope of our material lives and made a creation to meet it. And so the land abounds.

Loaded with Ore

And that means — and here’s where I want to camp — it is

a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. (8:9b)

This land lacks nothing because its rocks and hills are loaded with bronze and iron. Mentioned together, bronze and iron symbolize power and military might. Power and might already in the land. Iron could be taken from stones. Iron meant wealth. It could be traded. And iron was immediately useful in all areas of life. Iron-made tools for soldiers, tools for stonecutters, tools for carpenters, tools for farmers. Iron was used for axles, reinforced wheels, and chariots.

Even more diversely useful was copper. Copper could be excavated from the hills. It would be the most common material used for jewelry. It would be polished into mirrors. Copper mixed with tin made bronze, a hard and durable metal. Farmers would use bronze for plowpoints, threshing sledges, axes, pruning shears, yokes, and sickles. Soldiers would use bronze for chains, chain mail, armor, helmets, shields, javelins, bows, and arrows, as well as to fortify city walls and gates. Stonemasons would use bronze tools to cut and shape rock. God’s worshipers would use copper and bronze musically to make symbols.

“If we hold our iPhone up and cannot see God’s generosity in it — that’s inexcusable.”

Most importantly, David would prepare for the temple by acquiring iron and “bronze in quantities beyond weighing” (1 Chronicles 22:3). Then his son Solomon would take that iron and “bronze beyond weighing” and build the temple (1 Chronicles 22:14–16) — one to dazzle the world with shiny copper things: pots, shovels, basins, furniture, altars, entire doors. Bronze hardware would be everywhere — all by God’s design.

God’s nation has been handed all the iron and bronze needed to build a temple that gleams in the sunshine to attract all the nations to God. It is within God’s redemptive history that iron and bronze and human inventiveness find their home.

Israel’s unweighable abundance of iron and copper and bronze is as much a gift from God as the manna flakes they ate daily in the desert. All these weapons, all these tools, all these decorations to beautify God’s house — all of it God coded into the promised land at creation — by design. One reason the good land lacked nothing is because it was designed with all of Israel’s future “tool and technologies” needs in mind. All of Israel’s future tool needs were met and pre-coded into the good land by God, from the beginning of time — a gracious gift of the Creator’s design given in order to shape Israel’s material future.

There are staggering realities here, linking God’s sovereign plan for a nation’s future to its available natural resources. So, who’s getting the praise for these shiny metal things in Israel’s technological future?

And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. (8:10)

There again is its name: “the good land.” A land without lack. So, praise the Creator of this good land. When you have all this prosperity, thank God for it! You have it by his design.

How Faith Receives Technology

The full implications of these few verses deserve a book. But here are four statements only people of faith can make.

1. Follow human inventions back to the Creator.

The One who laid the foundations of the world is the One who dug deep channels for water. And the One who channeled the water infused into his creation of iron and copper to inspire his people’s future inventions. So, where does material technology come from? The Lord. God’s sovereign plan for each nation unfolds according to the available resources he has given. It was he who determined, “Let’s put 70 billion tons of high-grade phosphate rock in Norway and another 40 billion tons of lithium in Nevada for them to use in 2024.” That’s one way the Creator sovereignly guides the future of nations.

If you think that’s only true for Israel and not Europe, I’ll add our friend Spurgeon into the chat. I can’t talk tech without a Spurgeon quote. He got it. And it would be unforgivable to speak here without a Spurgeon mention. Here he is landing a sermon illustration about coal. Spurgeon said this:

A man, looking at the coal mines of England, naturally considers that God made that coal with the intention of supplying the world’s inhabitants with fuel, and that he stored it, as it were, away in those dark cellars underground for this favored nation [England], that the wheels of its commerce might be set in motion.

God made coal — made it for man to discover and burn — then hid that coal until just the right moment to reveal his generosity to England and to fire her economic engine. That’s how Christians view the material world, through the lens of Deuteronomy 8.

Our inventions unfold according to the discoveries we continue to make into God’s creation, in God’s timing. And so, Israel was positioned to discover and invent and build, “being gratefully aware” that all the “material resources, imagination, planning, skills, energy” — all of it was given to them by God. God governs the unfolding story of nations by governing the story of human inventiveness by how he designed his creation. True for Israel, Norway, Nevada, England.

2. Marvel at God’s glory exposed in our mining discoveries.

We won’t go there, but Job 28:1–11 is all about mining. An amazing “hymn celebrating human technology,” specifically of man’s “technological ability” to excavate what’s in the earth. That text led theologian Abraham Kuyper to say this, long before the digital age:

Man was designed and intended for digging up what God has hidden in the earth and for glorifying the greatness of God through doing this. . . . God enclosed gold and silver, all precious metals and precious stones, in the heart of the earth, and if there had been no human beings to bring these treasures to the surface, and to let the luster of the gold shine and to bring out the brilliance of the diamond by cutting it, then God would never have received the honor and praise for these, his more delicate creations in the mineral kingdom. (Common Grace, 2:97)

Amazing. True of gold, silver, diamonds, the brass on the temple, coal, and high-grade phosphate and the resources that feed our economies. Miners continue to set free the otherwise unseen creative brilliance of our God.

3. Enjoy the Creator in your inventions.

We so easily miss the main point of why mining exists. Kuyper just said it. Many previous nations have failed here. We will too if we’re not careful. We must also heed God’s warning in Deuteronomy 8:17–18. So, what’s the safe way to go here? Should we, God’s people, just diss on material things? Hate on technology? Scoff at EVs? Ignore the Norway discovery as vain worldliness? Let’s find out.

Beware lest you say in your heart . . . (Deuteronomy 8:17a)

Here it is again. What our industries do with all that high-grade phosphate rock in Norway or lithium in Nevada is one thing. What our heart does with all that phosphate rock and lithium is the concern of God. The heart of his people is the far bigger issue. Do you see God’s generosity or not? What does your heart do with all this culture-making and city-building and human tech-making? The temptation is to say,

“My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” (8:17b)

To say that is to utterly fail! Israel, when you’ve settled into this land, you’ll stand back and enjoy the skyline of your cities. You’ll look at all the houses you have made. The new shoes and new clothes you wear. All the copper and brass and iron tools you invented to make you strong, prosperous, and wealthy. Your temple will shine in the sun. You will see oil and wine flowing from your industry. You will see farmers hauling carts of grain. You will see bakeries full of bread. Your markets will be full of food. You will make banks and financial systems and succeed in international trade. And if you fail to see God’s generosity in it all, you are an idolater.

The only explanation for why anything in the world works — why tech works, why our cars work, our computers, our phones, our batteries, why we generate wealth — is owing to the power and generosity of God. So instead,

You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth. (8:18a)

God claims the glory for every penny of Israel’s wealth. He claims credit for the ultimate, final product of Israel’s industry. All the economic momentum of Israel is all because of God. He claims credit not merely for the iron and copper — or the phosphorus and lithium — but for the power to excavate these materials, and then he claims credit for wealth generated by turning those raw materials into solar panels and batteries. Why? Because all industrial wealth is traced back to its first cause: God’s generosity in creation. The God who gives out manna day by day in the desert is the same God who plants mineral deposits to spur Israel’s creativity and to spur us forward in our batteries and solar panels. Same God. Same generosity. Do you see it? Do you see him?

Every nation is held accountable here, as verses 19 and 20 suggest. Everything we make spotlights God’s abounding generosity. So, build houses. Burn coal. Make batteries and solar panels. Build economic systems. Engage in international trade. Grow trees for lumber to build homes. Harness the lightning and electrify your cities. Replicate the sun in nuclear fusion. Listen as the Creator helps you max out your farm yields. Make new things out of metal. Make new cars. Make EVs if you want. Make more comfortable clothing materials. Make new gadgets. And when you do all of it, people of God, enjoy God in it.

“The first cause of our life is not what goes into our mouths, but what comes out of God’s mouth.”

God never assumes his people will do this well! Deuteronomy 8 assumes that God’s own people will grow blind to his generosity in the shiny metal things they hold in hand. If we hold our iPhone up and cannot see God’s generosity in it — that’s inexcusable. This world will condition us — us Christians — to see mining headlines and to think man-centered thoughts. We’re wired to do everything but move from mining discoveries to the iPhone to the Creator’s generosity. Deuteronomy 8 corrects us.

4. Employ your inventions to reach the nations.

We often make the mistake of thinking technology is outside of redemptive history and inconsequential to the church. Silicon Valley is just humans doing human things. It’s Babel. It’s rebellion. Ignore it. And then we open our Bibles to find the story of human innovation woven right into redemptive history, as God claims credit for everything we make out of metal — our gadgets, cities, temples, homes, economies. Technology is there, not as some intruder into God’s redemptive plan, but as a servant within God’s redemptive plan. We have tech because we have a mission.

There’s a world of lost sinners to reach, so the temple needs brass and the missionary’s bush plane needs gas. And God is the first cause of both the brass and the gasoline. The best of our inventions is missionally useful. Israel’s iron and brass was meant to attract the nations.

In the story of the church, we could talk about the history of metallurgy and the iron nails used in the cross, or the invention of the Greek language to codify a far-reaching tongue, or the brilliance of Roman roads, wooden ships, the codex Bible, printing presses, steam trains, steamships, fossil fuels, combustion engines, off-road trucks, bush planes. Everything needed to pull off a Spurgeon sermon and then a Billy Graham revival meeting, or to show the Jesus Film in a dark village, or to broadcast the gospel on AM/FM airwaves, or for digital media to enter closed and remote countries through smartphones. Tech exists because the church exists. Tech exists because the Great Commission exists.

Here’s the bottom line: In 70 billion tons of phosphate in Norway or 40 billion tons of lithium in Nevada, never grow blind to God’s glory and generosity on display. Marvel at the Maker. Don’t watch a SpaceX rocket fire through the sky and marvel at man. Don’t watch a SpaceX rocket launch and diss on man. See beyond man. Marvel at the Maker of our makers. And marvel in your heart at the foresight of a Maker whose creation would produce rockets and cars and gasoline and batteries and solar panels and iPhones, and thousands of innovations we’re using right now and take for granted every day. God claims it all.

“Well, this is the end, Sam Gamgee,” said Frodo to his dear companion. The Ring was melting in the fires of Mount Doom. Mordor was collapsing in ruin around them. For all they knew, the whole world was disintegrating. Lava rushed down the slopes. The quest was, beyond hope, achieved. The hobbits had done what they came to do, but they did not count on getting home. Frodo had given every drop of strength and will. He sat down and waited to die. This seemed to be the world’s, and his, last hour.

In those apparently final moments, Frodo’s only comfort was the sweetness of companionship. “I am glad you are here with me,” he said. “Here at the end of all things, Sam.” These words pierce me every time. I can see Sam gently holding Frodo’s wounded hand. “Yes, I am with you, Master . . . and you’re here with me. And the journey’s finished” (The Lord of the Rings, 950).

The great burden lifted, we can feel the relief. We may even tear up over the tenderness, our hearts breaking over Frodo’s resignation. He celebrates this utter triumph for Middle-earth only in terms of having his Sam with him in the brief moments before the end.

Brushes with the End

We may well experience events that make us feel the end of all things has arrived. Once, I was young and foolish enough to keep driving on the interstate in a snowstorm. Suddenly, my car flew off the road. Airborne off a hill, time slowed down. The very heart of me spoke, “I love Jesus. I love my family.” Surprisingly, I felt companioned in those milliseconds. This was the end, and weirdly I felt peace along with the adrenalin. Then the car landed in the snow, miraculously undamaged. Completely fine, I just drove back onto the highway like nothing had happened. Yet I would never be the same. I knew I could die anytime. I knew I was never alone.

That was not the last time I braced for death. In Louisiana, we know hurricanes. A few years before Hurricane Ida in 2021, we’d lived through major damage and repairs from uprooted trees crashing on our house. So this time, as Ida roared toward us, we waited for the worst. The power had already gone out. We moved to the family room, lest the neighbor’s fifty-foot tree should crush us in the night. We settled into our sleeping bags with the dogs, turned off the transistor radio, and tried to sleep. The end of all things — that is, life as we know it — might well be coming. It was good not to be alone.

“Jesus himself is the end, the purpose, the goal, the completion of everything.”

Or take last winter. My wife put tiredness aside and drove through the night when word came that her ailing father had suffered a stroke. She made it in time to spend a day with him at hospice. Her prayerful, loving presence brought peace to her family. But more, she felt the sweet companionship with her father, even though he was not awake. “It’s good to be here with you, Dad, here at the end of all the things we’ve known together in this world. Nothing will be the same, but these moments are ours.”

Life as we know it always stands on the brink of endings, both small and momentous. The curtain closes on the final performance, and the troupe will never be so close again. Graduation means now you can never quite go home. The divorce decree arrives, stamped and notarized; the book closes on all that life you once shared. The family business shutters after generations. It was on your watch. The song ends, the plates are cleared, and each day — the best and the worst — fades to night.

The world rotates and revolves relentlessly so that change, endings, always draw nigh. We look around and see who remains when nothing will be as it has been. Maybe a friend, a son, a daughter, a spouse. “It’s good to be with you, dear one, here at the end of all things.”

The World Is Passing Away

These personal tastes of the end remind us that the whole world, even the cosmos, will not remain in present form. Indeed, the conclusion of this age has already been set in motion. Peter writes, “The end of all things is at hand” (1 Peter 4:7). The completion of everything has drawn near. With the incarnation of the Son of God and his journey through death, resurrection, and ascension, this world has entered the last days. Of course, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8). The world may endure for centuries more, but the last day, as we know it, is now inevitable. Jesus will return.

This awareness changes how we view the world. We may be despairing of the future. The earthly powers bluster and threaten, posturing that they know the score and call the shots. The world insists that now is all. We’re prodded to accept that the way things are is the way things always will be. We can rush into our days filled with the dull but persistent anxiety that comes from hopelessness. We try not to think about the end. But when we gather around the word in worship with other believers, we see more clearly. The new age of the reign of Christ has begun. The old world in all its rebellion is fading away (1 John 2:17). The true purpose of every created thing will be made clear very soon.

Jesus declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). Jesus himself is the end, the purpose, the goal, the completion of everything. Apart from him, we find only the emptiness and abyss of being outside his purpose. Joined to him, we will find that everything gets resolved.

What Matters in the End

This higher view of where the world is going gives us hope. But it also presses on us the urgency of accountability. Every moment may be our last. So, Jesus told the parable of the complacent man who believed he had secured enough goods for a comfortable future. The man told himself, “Relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But then God said, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you” (Luke 12:19–20). Our personal endings can come at any hour. And then an accounting of our lives must be given.

That’s why Peter expands on the implications of his statement, “the end of all things is at hand.” He writes, “Therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:7–8). This life counts. This life could end in an instant. So, live with the end, the goal, the purpose in mind. Live for what lasts.

“This life counts. This life could end in an instant. So, live with the end, the goal, the purpose in mind.”

In his great love chapter, Paul concludes, “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Only what partakes of faithful trust in Christ and lovingkindness toward others will survive through the end into the new creation. Jesus both evokes fear and inspires hope when he says, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). Because we know what the end of all things will be, we also know what matters. Every present moment is charged with the future end of all things. And our personal ending could arrive any second.

So, we live with the end in mind.

With Us to the End

We cannot stop the ever-arriving endings in the world, or even in our personal lives. Endings come because change continues. But when we trust that the world’s true end is the day of Christ Jesus, we live in hope. We live for his mission. And he promises that we are companioned. “Go . . . and make disciples of all nations. . . . And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19–20).

We are not alone. We face these endings, even the endings of life as we know it, with one who has endured the end of all things, the plunge into the utter darkness of God-forsakenness on the cross, so that we do not face any ending, any nightfall, alone. And usually, in his mercy, he sends us a fellow believer, a Sam, to keep us company along the way.

So, Scottish pastor Alistair Maclean prayed, “Thou hast destined us for change, us and all things Thy hands have made. Yet we fear not. Nay, rather, we are jubilant. Hast Thou not loved us before the world began? What can change bring us but some better thing?” (Hebridean Altars, 89).

Given enough time, men and women of principle stand out. After waves of social pressure and the mounting cares of this life, such people are left standing, long after others around them have compromised and toppled.

I’m referring to Christians who don’t play favorites and aren’t partisans of this age. They don’t bend the truth or sweep respectable sins under the rug. Rather, they call Jesus “Lord,” and standing with two feet on his soil, they call “spade” and “evil” to all sides of error and unbelief. Such men and women refuse to cut moral corners, or presume that strategic wrongs can make others right. They shun small compromises and may not stand out at first. But give it time, and their truth and good will be conspicuous (1 Timothy 5:25).

When justice is at stake, such people are not partial to the rich, or the poor. They don’t pick a favorite group, or preferred person, and twist truth and righteousness to fit their darling. Bearing the name of their God, and the Messiah he sent, they judge with impartiality and decide with equity.

And in the spiritual conflict in which we’re engaged, they “stand against the [plural] schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11) that come from every side. They remember that our warfare is spiritual, not “against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12) — and that this war cannot be fought with the weapons of the world.

If such men and women seem to be in short supply in some circles, we might ask, Where do such people come from?

God’s Armor and Ours

“God shows no partiality” is a striking refrain across Scripture, and particularly in the New Testament (Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25). The implication for God’s people is plain and explicit: do nothing from partiality (1 Timothy 5:21). This is James’s memorable teaching about rich and poor who come to worship: “show no partiality” (James 2:1). “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:9).

“The Christian who wraps his soul in the objective truth of Scripture shapes his subjective heart for the wiles of war.”

But all this truth and righteousness, precious as it is, remains downstream when we come to “the whole armor of God” — and what Paul lists first. Before we start reaching for God’s armor, we should know whose it is, and who wore it first.

Now, some of Scripture’s most magnificent passages can be lost on us through over-familiarity. Such chapters as Isaiah 53 and 1 Corinthians 13 are deservedly famous — and in that due emphasis and celebration, many of us need to move past our dulling acquaintance with them and see them with fresh eyes, and amazement.

The “armor of God” in Ephesians 6 is one of these stunning flourishes. This is Paul at his best, with dazzling Christian creativity, if we might call it that. In one powerfully rhetorical swath, he both pulls together Old Testament references to armor and presses them into Christian use (perhaps even against a Roman backdrop). This is instructive of the range of usages the apostles can make of the Hebrew Scriptures, not only as simple promise-fulfillment, but also illusions and types and patterns and artistic syntheses crafted to serve the holy designs of the authors and needs of their readers. Here the apostle is both poet and pastor.

Iain Duguid makes a compelling case that

each of the pieces of armor has a rich background in the Old Testament, where they describe God’s armor — the armor that God himself dons to rescue his people. The Old Testament, not the Roman legionary, provided Paul with his inspiration — and if we miss this background, we may misinterpret and misapply the various pieces of the armor.

So, we begin with the first — “the belt of truth,” which strictly speaking isn’t armor, defensive or offensive, but pre-armor or under-armor. Let’s see it first in its original context, and what it shows us of our Divine Warrior, and then how we, very practically, might “wear the belt” today as Christians in a world of half-truths.

Messiah Wrapped in Righteousness

Isaiah 11 tells of the coming “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” David’s father. The mention of Jesse recalls the humble origins of Israel’s greatest king. The wide trunk that is God’s first-covenant people may be felled by an invading army, but God will see to it that a stump will remain — and in time a new shoot of life will spring from David’s line.

The prophet anticipates that this coming Messiah, with the Spirit of God resting on him, will delight in the fear of God — and so will be no partisan king. He will not be deceived by appearances and personal preferences, “but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth” (Isaiah 11:3–4). Strikingly, he will not then take up the physical sword to enforce his will but exact justice with the word of his power: “he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).

Seven centuries later, when the apostle writes so memorably to Christians about putting on “the whole armor,” he draws first on Isaiah 11:5:

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,and faithfulness (truth) the belt of his loins.

Gracious and merciful as will be this Messiah to rescue his people, he will not act unjustly. He will not take bribes or underwrite half-truths. He will not treat wrong as right, or sweep injustice under the rug. Delighting to reverence his divine Father and cosmic justice, he will be a king who delights in right, does right, and is known for it. Even his opponents will have to admit, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God” (Luke 20:21).

So here, looking to the righteous actions of Jesus, Paul notes our first step in dressing for spiritual battle.

Prepare Your Soul with Truth

Before reaching for breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet, or sword, first comes the under-armor. There’s technically no “belt” here in Ephesians 6:14. This first step of preparation is literally, “having girded up your loins in truth” (perizōsamenoi tēn osphun humōn en alētheia). We might say wrap your waist in truth.

In the ancient world, “girding up your loins” meant wrapping your waist with the excess fabric of a long robe as “preparation for vigorous activity” (O’Brien, Ephesians, 473). Drawing up the dangling garment, and securing it at the waist, enabled running, free movement, and unhindered combat. With this foundational fashion in place, warriors then could secure their armor and go into battle.

For spiritual war, the Christian first is to wrap his loins in truth. Now, as “the belt,” this is not yet truth on the offensive (that’s the sword of the Spirit), but this is God’s truth applied to oneself, to the inner man, the soul, the “inward being” or “secret heart” (Psalm 51:6). The Christian who wraps his soul in the objective truth of Scripture shapes his subjective heart for the wiles of war. He takes the divine word deep into his human center, for transformation and joy. He not only searches the Scriptures, but lets the Scriptures search him. He ingests God’s truth both to feed and to condition his soul, subjectively using the objective truth to shape his pliable affections.

Slowly, one day at a time, over months and years, this wrapping makes him a vastly different person, far better equipped to both identify truth and embody it.

Wrap Yourself in His Word

Wrapping ourselves in truth applies to more than personal Bible intake, but not less. Those best prepared for spiritual war are those who not only dip into the word briefly but saturate their lives with it. They wrap their souls in God’s truth through various habits and patterns, personally and corporately — through reading and rereading and study and meditation and memorization and discussion. They click on content that strengthens their bearings and their delight in truth, rather than error.

We all wrap our souls in something. Is it truth or error? And as we practice choosing truth daily, reading truth, clicking truth, meditating on truth, talking truth, then we become ready to discern truth from error, counterfeits, and half-truths.

“Those best prepared for spiritual war are those who not only dip into the word briefly but saturate their lives with it.”

And having wrapped our souls in truth, we become the kind of people who bring truth with us wherever we go. We not only speak truth but embody it, and even more, speak the truth of the gospel into places and hearts of unbelief. We are truth-tellers in our jobs, on our taxes, when we fill out insurance claims, when we serve as jurors, when we find a financial error in our favor, and when we hear someone speak a half-truth about someone else. Like Jesus, we will become agents of truth wherever we go: when we walk into a room, or stand up at a school-board meeting, or sit in a conference room, or engage in conversation.

Wrapped in truth, we’ll be the kind of people who say, in every crisis, Let truth hold sway. Let the unvarnished truth be discovered and known. Truth will not undermine the cause of our God and Christ, who is the Truth. Rather, the cause of truth — openhanded, not angling, full exposure, light into darkness — is an effect downstream of our knowing and enjoying the word of truth, the gospel, about the one who is Truth himself.

And so we call out spades and evil, and call on Jesus as Lord. We refuse to cut moral corners, cater to lies, or presume that some wrongs can make others right. First, we wrap ourselves daily in God’s truth. Then, we reach for the armor, and over time we grow increasingly bright and shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father, and in this age besides.

Audio Transcript

Boosted by a fresh dose of resurrection hope coming out of Easter Sunday, we are talking about death on the podcast this week. We are free to speak openly about dying in hopeful ways the world cannot speak of, free to say that what is sown into the soil “does not come to life unless it dies” (1 Corinthians 15:36).

In that hope, we started the week with the story of V. Raymond Edman, a preacher who died in the pulpit, an event from Pastor John’s very formative years at Wheaton College and one he almost never talks about. But he did on Monday. And today we read about death in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. It comes in the context of Paul talking about division and jealousy in the church, in 1 Corinthians 3:1–23. And there Paul gives us this amazing motivation for not getting jealous in this life. And that motive is the gift of death. He says, “Death is ours.” And that has led to many emails over the years asking what in the world Paul means that death is a gift to us, specifically there in 1 Corinthians 3:22. How, Pastor John, would you explain the divine gift of death here in this context?

Well, I love this text, 1 Corinthians 3:21–23. Tony, it’s very hard for me to talk about this without raising my voice with exuberance, and I will try to restrain myself. But hundreds of realities are thrilling in the Bible. This one is off-the-charts, unspeakably amazing. Let me read it for our friends so they know what we’re talking about.

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)

End of Boasting

So, Paul is trying to get the Corinthians to stop boasting in human beings. That’s the agenda. Back in 1 Corinthians 1:11–12, they were saying, “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Cephas.” In other words, they were exalting themselves over others by borrowing significance from their favorite teacher or orator or intellectual, claiming to be superior to others because they were in the Paul group or the Apollos group or the Cephas group.

And basically, Paul says (in 1 Corinthians 3:21–22), “You’re insane. You’re crazy for thinking like that.” Why are you crazy? And he gives them the reason. “Let no one boast in men,” and here comes the reason: “[because] all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future.” Everything is yours.

So, Paul exposes the craziness of the Corinthian boasting by turning their words upside down. They were saying, “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Cephas.” And Paul says,

No, they belong to you, you idiots. All things are yours. Paul is yours. Apollos is yours. Cephas belongs to you. And by the way, so does the world and life and death. All things are yours, you crazy Corinthians. Come on, wake up to who you are. You belong to Christ. You are fellow heirs with Christ, and he is the heir of God, and God owns everything. Get it? Come on.

So stop acting like idiots, Corinthians. Stop trying to prop up your significance in this world by boasting in your favorite teacher. You own everything. The poorest Christian among you, the poorest Christian on this planet, is richer than the richest unbeliever.

Death Is Your Servant

Specifically, then, what does it mean that death is yours, along with everything else? “You own death. It’s your possession. It doesn’t possess you; you possess it.” What does that mean? Now, I’ll give you my understanding of that statement, and then I’ll take you to several passages of Scripture that support this understanding.

“The poorest Christian on this planet is richer than the richest unbeliever.”

When Paul says, “Death [is] yours,” he means, “Death is your servant — not your master, your servant.” It does for you what you need to have done. If I say, “The food in my refrigerator is my food; it’s mine,” I mean, “I can eat it without stealing, and it serves me; it strengthens me to do what I need to do.” If I say, “This car is my car,” I mean, “It serves me; I use it. It doesn’t use me; I use it. It gets me where I want to go.”

So, I’m saying that Paul means, “Paul is your servant” (in fact, he says that earlier in 1 Corinthians 3:5). “Paul is your servant. Apollos is your servant. Cephas is your servant. The world is your servant. Life and death are your servants. You don’t serve them; they serve you. You don’t exist for their benefit; they exist for your benefit. In the end, they will do for you exactly what you need to have done. Death will do for you what you need done.”

All Things Serve God’s Children

Now, here are some biblical pointers to that understanding. Psalm 119:90–91 says,

Your faithfulness [O God] endures to all generations;     you have established the earth, and it stands fast.By your appointment they stand this day,     for all things are your servants.

Everything in the universe serves the purposes of God — everything. There are (as R.C. Sproul used to say) no maverick molecules. Every bird that falls, every hair that turns white, is of God. Everything serves the purposes of God. We are God’s children, and it would make no sense if God said, “Well, all things serve me, but when it comes to my children, I just have no idea how to make all things serve them.” That is crazy. It’s not only crazy; it’s blasphemous. If all things serve our omnipotent, all-wise, all-caring Father, then all things serve us.

More Than Conquerors

Which brings me, then, to Romans 8:28. “We know that for those who love God all things [including death] work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” In other words, all things, including death, serve the children of God, serve their good, do for us what we need to have done.

Then Paul lists all the things that might “separate us from the love of Christ” (Romans 8:35), and included in that list is “danger” and “sword,” which means danger and death. We used swords to chop off people’s heads in those days. And we know that because, in the next verse (Romans 8:36), it says, “We are being killed all the day long.” Christians are dying for their faith every day, even today. Somewhere in the world, some Christian’s life is being threatened for his faith. And Paul says, “Death is yours. It serves you.”

How does he say that right here in Romans 8:37? This is the really amazing part. He doesn’t just say, “Death cannot separate us from the love of Christ.” He says that. It’s not all he says. He says, “No [no!], in all these things” — not in spite of them, but in all these things, including death, danger, sword, peril, famine, nakedness — “we are more than conquerors.” You could translate it “super-conquerors.”

“Life and death are your servants. You don’t serve them; they serve you.”

So, if death takes your life (which he says it does in Romans 8:36), how are you, in that moment when death has taken your life, more than a conqueror? How does it serve you? You’re not just a conqueror — it doesn’t just lie there conquered at your feet. It is “more than a conqueror.” It gets up; death gets up. After you’ve slain death, it gets up and serves you. Death does what you need doing and takes you where you need going.

Two Powers Dethroned

So, if we really believed — O God, help us. Every time I work on this text, I just shake my head and think, How in the world can this text go out of my head? How can I not live in the light of this text? And it happens. It’s just a horrible thing how it happens to us Christians. This text just goes out of our head.

If we really believe this text (what the Bible says about us in 1 Corinthians 3:21–23) — namely, that all things are ours, including the finest intellects on the planet and the best orators and the richest people and life and death and the world and the present and the future — if we really believed that these things are our servants, two powers would be dethroned in our lives. First, we would no longer desperately try to find our significance in this world by being superior to others or by lining up with people who are superior. We would see that as insane. And second, we would stop fearing death. “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). It’s gone. It’s not only gone — it comes back around and becomes our servant.

ABSTRACT: The “Five Points of Magnetism” articulated by the twentieth-century missionary theologian J.H. Bavinck serve as a grid for understanding human cultures in every age. Formed in the image of God, humans necessarily ask the same basic questions about who they are and how they fulfill their place in the world. The gospel of Christ answers those questions and fulfills every longing. Learning to recognize these questions can help pastors serve their people in preaching and counseling, as well as empower them to offer a compelling witness to the world.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Dan Strange (PhD, University of Bristol), director of Crosslands Forum and the vice president of The Southgate Fellowship, to recover the “Five Magnetic Points” of missionary theologian J.H. Bavinck as a foundation for the church to engage with culture in a compelling manner.

If you knew me, you would know that I have not been gifted with the body of a climber. However, a few years ago I became somewhat obsessed with the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, which captures Alex Honnold’s breathtaking ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park: 2,900 feet (884 meters) in 3 hours and 56 minutes without any ropes or safety aids. In parts of the climb, the rock face appears so vertical and smooth that it seems impossible for Honnold to get a grip (could he really be Spiderman?). On closer inspection, though, we discover indentations, nubs, and abrasions, however small, that Honnold uses creatively, not to mention with great effort and patience, to get traction and continue his journey to the top.

Engaging late-modern culture, and indeed any culture, in terms of our pastoring, preaching, and persuasion can seem as if we’re trying to climb a sheet of glass. We may not like to admit it, but we often struggle to get traction, to understand and connect with people where they really are — their hopes, dreams, and fears. It can feel as if we’re losing our grip and slipping down. How do we get traction given such pervasive uninterest and even antagonism?

As evangelical Christians, however, getting traction is not our only concern, and this is where my Free Solo illustration breaks down. Alex Honnold is not to be our example. There’s a tragic montage in Free Solo that shows how many of Alex’s friends in the free-solo climbing community have fallen to their deaths. Free soloing is absolute madness. Yes, we want to get traction, but we also know we need to be tethered. Our ministry, in all its facets, if it is to be truly life-giving, must be tethered to Christ and his word. This is where we find not only safety and security, but also sight. Far from being restricting, such tethering gives us confidence, freedom, and imagination to get traction in whatever cultural context the Lord has placed us because we learn from God’s word that there is always a point of contact to confront and call our culture to come to Christ.

Seeing Culture Through Scripture

What I’ve said so far is nothing original. The swirl and interplay between our confession and our context — and to which I would add our character — are perennial issues in theology and missiology that can discombobulate and paralyze. Which theory of “contextualization” can we understand, let alone utilize? How do we have the time and energy to keep up with the constant shape-shifting of cultural trends and artifacts? Do all pastors today need PhDs in the sociology of religion and an intricate theory of secularization?

To aid our progress, I have found the Dutch Reformed missiologist J.H. Bavinck (1895–1974), the nephew of Herman Bavinck, to be an expert guide in helping us gain traction while remaining securely tethered: exegeting culture through the exegesis of Scripture.1 In this essay, I outline Bavinck’s theological anthropology in his understanding of humanity’s religious consciousness, unpacked in what he calls the “magnetic points,” which are subversively fulfilled in Jesus Christ. I then apply this to our pastoring, preaching, and persuasion.

The ‘Perilous Exchange’

To unpack what it means for humanity to be religiously conscious, Bavinck focuses his attention on Romans 1:18–32. In the cosmic game of hide-and-seek, Bavinck says, God is not the one hiding. He has made himself known in everything he has created, with the climax of creation being his image bearers. This revealing is dynamic, personal, and relational. More than most commentators on this seminal passage, Bavinck unpacks the revelation of God’s “invisible qualities” (Romans 1:20 NIV). God’s “eternal power” notes our creaturely dependence on our Creator.2 His “divine nature” recognizes our personal accountability to a Someone — the Someone — rather than a “something” or an “It.”3 Dependence and accountability are hardwired into human beings (something to which we’ll shortly return).

What do we do with this personal knowledge? In the game played out since Eden, we are the ones who try to hide. We suppress the truth and try to drown it, and with that choice comes a “perilous exchange”4 where we idolatrously substitute all kinds of created things for the uncreated God in the foolish attempt to extricate “eternal power” and “divine nature” from them.

This suppression and substitution of revealed truth can be hard to understand, but Bavinck offers a memorable illustration in the metaphor of a dream, or better still, a nightmare. In a nightmare, the phenomena we experience in reality during the day are ripped out of their original contexts and become grotesque — twisted and distorted new ideas and fantasies. This whole process makes up what Bavinck calls humanity’s universal “religious consciousness.” We are God’s image bearers built for worship, and yet we have rebelled against our Creator. We know God and so are without excuse, but we are also ignorant of him. We are running to him and away from him at the same time. This is the dignity and depravity of our humanity.

This messy mix is what I believe Paul is getting at in Acts 17 when he calls the Athenians “very religious” and points to their unknown god. He’s not commending their idolatry (he’s been deeply distressed, notes their ignorance, and will call them to repentance), but he starts where they are, recognizing their need for worship as a point of contact (or better, attack).

Five Magnetic Points

Bavinck’s experience on the mission field in Indonesia and then back in a theological seminary in the Netherlands led him to unpack this religious consciousness. Yes, different religions and worldviews are vastly different, and yet, he writes,

There seems to be a kind of framework within which human religions need to operate. There appear to be definite points of contact around which all kinds of ideas crystallize. There seem to be quite vague feelings — one might better call them direction signals that have been actively brooding everywhere. . . . Perhaps this can be expressed thus: there seem to be definite magnetic points that time and again irresistibly compel human religious thought. Human beings cannot escape their power but must provide an answer to those basic questions posed to them.5

These “magnetic points,” fashioned from our distortions of God’s “eternal power” and “divine nature” (which stress our creaturely accountability), can manifest themselves in a multitude of mutations, but “since they are rooted in our existence, they are stronger than ourselves, and somehow we must come to grips with them.”6 Even if these points are never consciously articulated, human beings still answer them by “their entire conduct” and “attitude to life”: their “whole way of living already implies an answer, and is an answer.”7 These are the itches that we have to scratch, even if they just lead to more irritation.

Bavinck notes that there are five of these magnetic points, each offering a perspective on the one religious consciousness. The following is my own summary of them.8

1. Totality: Is there a way to connect?

All humans have an innate sense of totality and connection that shapes our identity. On the one hand, we often feel so small and insignificant, just specks in the vast universe with no value or worth, and treated as such. Any yet, when we connect with something or someone(s) bigger, we find significance through belonging and enjoy communal awareness. Therefore, we crave connection, often feel abandoned after we’ve experienced it, and crave for it again and again.

2. Norm: Is there a way to live?

We have a vague sense there are rules to be obeyed. People recognize and accept moral standards and codes that come from outside them and to which they must adhere. This knowledge brings with it a sense of responsibility to live up to those norms. Even groups that seek to be countercultural have their own set of rules of nonconformity.

3. Deliverance: Is there a way out?

We know something is wrong with the world. There is finitude, brokenness, and wrongdoing, and the problems of suffering and death consistently confront us. We mourn for some kind of paradise lost and long for deliverance from these evils, craving redemption. And yet, we can’t agree on what our ultimate problem is, let alone whether there is a solution that would deliver us.

4. Destiny: Is there a way we control?

Although we know ourselves to be active players in the world, we have a nagging feeling that we are also passive participants in somebody else’s world. We both lead and undergo our lives. Sometimes we feel confident that we are masters of our destiny with agency and power to determine reality. Other times we feel restricted and trapped with no agency, like pawns in a cosmic game of chess or puppets on a string. We’re victims. We oscillate between these two moods, and cannot settle and find cognitive or existential rest.

5. Higher Power: Is there a way beyond?

This is the meta-magnetic point on which all the others converge. Humans perceive that behind all reality, beyond the veil, stands a great reality. The deeper we look to find connection, discover the norm, search for deliverance, and relate to our destiny, the more we come to the question of a higher power. But what is it? Who is it?

These, then, are the magnetic points that make up our religious consciousness, all formed from the anthropological clay of Romans 1 and the broader theological anthropology of Scripture. In Bavinck’s life and ministry, the phenomena before him (with which he used this framework) were what we might call recognized religious traditions and worldviews. And such analysis in cross-cultural settings is as relevant then as it is now.

However, I believe this anthropological framework, these five magnetic points, are just as relevant in our late-modern, post-Christian Western context. These magnetic points can be the lens through which we start to read our culture. They can help us connect with those around us who are scratching their “very religious” itches.9 They can be the magnetic poles we use to orient wandering souls to True North.

One Magnetic Person

Using this framework enables us to connect and confront our culture with the Lord Jesus Christ. In him, all the magnetic points are yes and amen. He is where the traction lies. The gospel of Christ confronts and subverts idolatrous religious consciousness and its historical manifestations, but it also provides its fulfillment. As we observe in 1 Corinthians 1, Christ crucified confronts all idolatrous cultural stories (1 Corinthians 1:20–25). It’s foolish and scandalous to Jews (who look for power) and to Greeks (who look for wisdom). And yet, to those who are being saved, Jesus is the power and is the wisdom that completes these stories (and the myriad of other stories we tell).

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the subversive fulfillment of the magnetic points. He is the magnetic Person that we present to people. In the cosmic game of hide-and-seek, where God is not hiding but we, Jesus, the light of the world, pierces the darkness. He is the greatest seeker who comes to seek and save the lost. (I can only present the barest pencil outline here. I will leave it to you to color in these points with the boldest and richest gospel colors.)

First, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of totality (the way to connect). The beautiful doctrine of the image of God affirms both our insignificance (we are not God) and our significance (we are images of God). We are Adam — ones “from the earth” — and so our need for connection is natural. And yet, we are disconnected: from ourselves, each other, the creation, and (most of all) the Creator, against whom we have rebelled. Being connected to this world means being connected to a world that is under judgment and is perishing.

Jesus, the Second Adam, offers a new kingdom into which we enter by repentance and faith. Entering this kingdom requires death and sacrifice but not a loss of self in terms of individuality and responsibility. Rather, it brings rebirth and resurrection, communion with God in our union with Christ and community in the body of Christ, the church.10

Second, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of the norm (the way to live). Jesus offers himself as both the standard and the Savior. In following Jesus, people come to see that God’s unchanging holy law is for our flourishing. Yet, he offers compassion to the outcast and marginalized, and he hates religious hypocrisy.

Third, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of deliverance (the way out). The war between ourselves, within ourselves, and with our environment has a root cause: our enmity with God. We face his righteous wrath and an eternity in hell. Deliverance can be found only through one Mediator, the God-man Jesus Christ — and through him alone. In him there is not only escape but restoration and eternal blessing.

Fourth, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of destiny (the way of control). Our world is not governed by blind fate or malevolent forces but by a sovereign God who is Lord over all creation, both natural and supernatural. This sovereignty does not take away human freedom but is its precondition. Christian destiny is liberating and joyful.

Finally, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of the higher power (the way beyond). We do not worship a non-Absolute deity or an impersonal force, but a Someone, maximally Absolute and maximally Personal, who is both transcendent and immanent, Judge and Savior. We worship One who has reached down to us in grace, the Word made flesh.

Many Magnetic People

Now that we have considered the five magnetic points and the one magnetic person, Jesus Christ, how might we utilize this framework in our ministry and mission?

Pastor Toward the Magnetic Person

First, in our pastoring. Our evangelism and apologetics flow from our discipleship. In 1883, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon on John 12:32 titled “The Marvelous Magnet.” He said,

All the magnetism comes from the first place from which it started, and when it ceases at the fountainhead there is an end of it altogether. Indeed, Jesus Christ is the great attractive magnet, and all must begin and end with Him. . . . Thus from one to another the mystic influence proceeds, but the whole of the force abides in Jesus. More and more the kingdom grows, “ever mighty to prevail,” but all the growing and the prevailing come out of Him. So it is that Jesus works — first by Himself, and then by all who are in Him. May the Lord make us all magnets for Himself.11

A teacher wrote to me recently about this quotation and gave me a physics lesson. Some materials can become magnetic when placed in a magnetic field, as they are made up of lots of regions called “domains,” which are essentially “mini-magnets.” When not in the magnetic field, they align randomly and cancel each other out so that there is no overall magnetic field. But in the presence of an external magnetic field, these domains align so that, instead of canceling each other out, their strengths combine to make the material magnetic.

Our hearts are like the unmagnetized material: we are fragmented. Our inner desires, commitments, loves, emotions, and beliefs are attracted by all sorts of created things. We have divided hearts (Psalm 86:11). What we need is to be close to Christ. As we behold his glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), spending time in his magnetic field, all our fragmented “mini-magnets” become attracted to him and start to align. He makes us magnetic.

We are either being formed by Christ or being deformed by something or someone else. If we are not being drawn to Christ, we are being drawn away by something else. The magnetic points serve as a helpful diagnostic tool as we pastor ourselves and those in our care. Where are our hearts seeking connections, norms, deliverances, destinies, and higher powers that are not in Christ?

The question then becomes, How are we to stay properly magnetized? The extraordinarily ordinary answer is, of course, by loving Jesus and loving his body, the church, through which the Holy Spirit re-magnetizes us each week, and sends us out on mission and into our God-given vocations. May the Lord make us all magnets for himself!

Preach with the Magnetic Points

Second, in our preparation for preaching. To connect every aspect of their sermons to the lives of the people in their churches, the Puritans used preaching grids that helped map out particular sermon applications. The magnetic points can function in a similar fashion, acting as a bridge to connect our preaching to the lives and concerns of our listeners. Because they are a way of understanding the Bible’s own anthropology, using them as an application grid is not an artificial imposition on the text. Because they are part of who we are, we can’t avoid touching on these themes.

Preachers don’t have to explain the magnetic points in their sermons. Like the scaffold in a building project, such a grid is temporary and won’t be on display in the final product. But the magnetic points do provide a useful grid as we aim to present Christ in our preaching as the fulfillment of our deepest longings.

Persuade with Magnetic Spaces

Third, in our persuasion. As I’ve already noted, the magnetic points provide a helpful framework for connecting with the non-Christians God has placed in our lives in a natural but intentional way.12 Sometimes this occurs in more direct and immediate evangelistic engagement. However, given our increasingly post-Christian culture — which is frantic, fractured, and polarized — civil dialogue and conversation is becoming more difficult. How do we even create opportunities to speak of Christ where people will genuinely listen and engage? Increasingly, some relationships call for a longer “run up.”

Among many steps churches could take, we could consider creating “magnetic spaces,” places where people can pause in the journey of life, gaining some relief from the storm. Like the ancient hospiciums, which before the nineteenth century were not places for the dying but rest houses for travelers, such spaces could provide relief from the storms of life and opportunities to reflect on the many issues people face. A magnetic space could be a book or film club, a regular meeting of parents or businessmen, a sports ministry, a mental-health discussion group, or more.

It should be noted that such magnetic spaces would not be guilty of what can be called bait-and-switch tactics. While each magnetic space is built by a local church, every space would be happily self-contained with an integrity of purpose in serving the community (for example, to produce better leaders, parents, or mental health) and in fostering and promoting civility. We would love all citizens in our hostile and fractious culture to be learning a convicted civility that combines a civil outlook with a passionate intensity, and where there is improved self-understanding, awareness, and listening. We might call this pre-pre-evangelism.

However, we need to note that helping people think through issues of life through the magnetic points serves the gospel by helping people uncover their own ultimate heart commitments. As Isaiah says in his great satire of idolatry, the problem with the idolater is that “no one stops to think” (Isaiah 44:18–19 NIV). Magnetic spaces would be places to get people to stop and think about their commitments and the objects of their worship. By God’s Spirit, they may begin to see the futility of lives not built on Christ, the only one who can give us connection, norm, deliverance, and destiny.

In other words, conversational difference creates the space and the platform for conversional difference. We might call this pre-evangelism. At this point, the churches that built the spaces are open and welcoming for those who want to hear more about Christ being the subversive fulfillment of their idolatrous longings.

Traction and Tethering

Tackling pastoring, preaching, and persuasion in our late-modern culture can seem as daunting, dizzying, and arduous as one of Alex Honnold’s vertiginous climbs. However, the magnetic points can provide both the traction and the tethering we need to make it to the top. Yes, such climbing requires creativity, imagination, and stamina, but we aren’t climbing solo. We have God’s Spirit with us, and we trust what God’s word says about the religious nature of all human beings, our security as Christian disciples, and the magnetism of the Lord Jesus Christ. What an exciting adventure to be part of.

What assassin better cloaks himself than Satan? He is a rumor whispered, a rustling of the bush, a cutthroat who leaves no witnesses. Everywhere he devastates, yet, seldom perceived, he attacks by submarine. Out of sight, out of mind, he burrows to the roots; we only see the forest dying.

In the West, a shy assassin, he conceals himself within a joke — a horned Halloweener dressed in red, brandishing a plastic pitchfork. He chuckles along with freethinking societies, nodding that his existence is but a ploy to maintain religious power or a fairy tale to parent naughty children. As Master of the air, this Pied Piper plays his music, his hiss, full of sweetness and song, suggesting softly of fruit able to make one wise.

Scripture unearths and names him. Slanderer. Accuser. Adversary. Tempter. Deceiver. Evil One. Prince of Demons. Great Dragon. His arrows, venomed, sink to the heart. His chariot wheels, when meant to be heard, quake the brave. His crimson fingers colored a third of heaven’s host. Great was their war; great is their war. Their skirmish toppled heaven; the serpent spoke on earth.

If the lights turned on, if we could see with physical eyes the god of this world and his troops arrayed about us, fetal would be man’s position. Staring at the beautiful face, hearing the capturing voice, would we be tempted to worship? Would most kneel, trembling, or try to crown him king? Though he remains absent from news channels, dire is our station; extreme, our contest; savage, our enemy.

“Stand upright, men of God; grip the hilt firmly. Your God is with you.”

Yet forward, Christ calls us; to a bloody victory we march. Onward, to a clash forbidding cliché. Advancing, for as Bunyan reminds us, we have no armor for our backs. But what can stir our blood and steel our mettle before such a terror? As great generals of the earth ride up and down the battlefront to rouse great deeds, men of God reached for words.

A Summons

Overhear Paul’s call to battle as he writes Christ’s troops in Ephesus. To begin, he does not undersell their foe. They cannot meet the like on earth.

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces, bodiless battalions. Not against a race of slaves or inferior beings, but against rulers and authorities and cosmic powers. Not against fortresses of stone, but against towers in the heavenlies. We are not outmanned but outspecied. Do trees array for battle against the forest fire? Do sheep march on a pack of wolves? Does wheat charge the sifter? Does flesh dare ascend the hill to demonic spirits? If words hold heat to waken courage, what words can help us keep rank against such terror?

To War

As if he can see the uncertainty in our eyes, the apostle cries, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Ephesians 6:10). Mount no steed of your own strength. Paul rides to the front lines as the Levites did the Israelite armies of old: “Let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory” (Deuteronomy 20:3–4). Stand! Stand! Stand! in the Lord (Ephesians 6:11, 13–14).

Stand upright, men of God; grip the hilt firmly. Your God is with you. Let not unbelief unhorse you now. As the fiends drum and hell hollers, one is with you higher than they, who greets their joint armies with a laugh. Stand firm. Withstand in this evil day. Take not one step back.

He goes forth with his people and clads us in his own armor. David required no great armor of the king, but we need the armor of the greater King David. “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11). Charge not forth in the chain mail of pride. You face battering rams beyond your defenses, strategies beyond your devising, weapons beyond your shielding. “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:13).

Spare not one piece: “Put on the whole armor of God.” Fasten on the belt of truth. Clasp the breastplate of righteousness. Shod your feet with the gospel of peace and its readiness. Forget the shield of faith to your own peril. Step not within bow range without your helmet. Go nowhere without his word, God’s two-edged sword. Pray for yourself; pray for each other. Watch over yourself; watch over others. Have each other’s back, left, and right. To war we ride.

To Christ

We dress not only in God’s armor, but go forth with God’s own Son, our own brother in the flesh. “I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep,” Alexander the Great once remarked. “I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”

Oh, the enemy has much to fear. Though we be regarded as sheep and are killed all the day long, what lion stands among us, before us, beside us. Weep no more, you troubled saint; the Lion of Judah has conquered. Though the giant barks loudly, we have one Man of War among us who does not need all five smooth stones. Though we still must fight if we would reign, he returns with the head of our foe.

“War has never seen the like before: conquest through crucifixion, dominion through death.”

What Brother is better born for the day of adversity than he who was born to bear our adversity? Having refused Saul’s armor, the greater David did not refuse Saul’s flesh. Born in the form of a slave, the eternal Son did not unsheathe weapons of divinity to win the war. See him stand fast, as man, for men. Tempted in the wilderness as man. Mocked, bleeding, dying as man. He wore the peasant’s weakness over his robes of eternity that he might win our salvation through the gory affair.

And how he conquered. He took on flesh to have it torn, a body to have it broken, blood to have it spilled upon the altar — for us. War has never seen the like before: conquest through crucifixion, dominion through death. Men twisted thorns, but crowned him; he hung under the name of “King.” Alexander’s Lion is also the Lamb, slaughtered, risen, reigning.

Will we not say, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16)? What safer place exists than on mission with Jesus? Demons fall distraught before him: “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:29). He holds the keys to Death and Hades. A sword protrudes from his mouth — one little word shall fell the ancient foe, as Luther put. An iron scepter is in his hands. On his blood-dipped robe he has a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords. His eyes flame with fire. On his head rest many crowns. The armies of heaven follow behind on white horses (Revelation 1:12–16; 19:11–16).

He is our brother, our Savior, our friend. No safer place in all the world than beside him in his conflict. “Let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:13–14).

To Glory

Do not fail to look to the time beyond. Feed your warring spirit thoughts of coming peace. The end has been proclaimed from the beginning. Soon and very soon it shall be asked, Where now are his foes? Where now the boasts of men? Where now those mighty authorities and cosmic powers? Sunk to the bottom of the sea like a stone.

Mighty ones of the earth, show yourselves! Nations gathered against his Anointed, come forth! Shattered they soon shall lie, dashed to pieces like a potter’s vessel. Soon it will be asked, Where now is your taunt, you who refused to kiss the Son? Soon it will be commanded, “As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27).

So come, my brothers and sisters, heirs of the kingdom, sons of Abraham by faith, mighty men of heaven, precious daughters of the King — while as yet despised of earth and beleaguered. Come, citizens of the unseen world, rulers of the age to come, judges of angels. Rise up, you men of the cross, sisters of the crown, soldiers of Christ endowed with his very Spirit. Come and speak. Come and die. Come and serve. Come and overcome. Come and stand firm. Crawl not after the same grass that entertains the cattle of the earth. Rise up! Partake of the heavenly bread, the heavenly conflict, the heavenly reward.

Do not mind you are outnumbered: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Pay no heed to man, in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he? Do you suffer? Think it not strange or worth mentioning compared to the glory that is to be revealed. Grumble not about those scars — very soon, they shall shine in heaven as your crest of glory. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” march on. Make good your fealty of faith. For glory. For honor. For immortality. For the King, with the King, in the King’s power. Onward against the foe, brothers and sisters: to war, to Christ, to glory.