Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. In our Bible reading this week, we hit Psalm 43. And within Psalm 43 we find one amazing little verse that unfolds into all sorts of implications, leading to a wonderful question from a pastor named Robert, who lives and ministers in Wisconsin. “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for the way you have served and encouraged pastors like me, from a distance, over the decades through your faithful labors. I love Psalm 43:4, a life verse for me, and one I want to better understand. I know you love this text as well. ‘Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy.’

“If I remember correctly, somewhere I heard you translate the Hebrew of this text like this: ‘Then I will go to the altar of God, to God the joy of my joys.’ God is the joy of our joys. I cannot find where you said this, but you’re not the only one, as I have come to see this in other interpretations of this verse from Puritan Thomas Goodwin in the seventeenth century (Works, 4:392), to William de Burgh in the nineteenth century (A Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 380), to classic Hebrew scholars today (David J.A. Clines, Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 8:166).

“So, can you walk us through the Hebrew briefly, and then explain what this means that God is the joy of our joys? I’ve historically thought of this text as saying what the ESV here implies, that God is the most exceeding joy above all other joys — a comparison. But you seem to indicate that this text is speaking of source — God is the joy, that is, the giver of all other joys. That changes the text completely. If so, expand on this. This seems like a huge discovery!”

Well, that’s not quite what I mean. I totally love what he loves here and want to get at it, because there is something really quite right. I don’t mean source when I say, “joy of our joys.” What I mean is, God is the essence of our joys. God is the substance of all our joys. He’s the best part of every joy if we are enjoying things rightly. So, he’s not only supreme joy — which is what the ESV brings out: our “exceeding joy” — but he is also the best part of all other joys. He is to be what makes all our joys most enjoyable. That’s what I mean.

‘Joy of My Gladness’

Let’s see if that’s so, and get the verse in front of us here. The psalmist is crying out to God, and he says,

Send out your light and your truth;     let them lead me;let them bring me to your holy hill     and to your dwelling!Then I will go to the altar of God,     to God my exceeding joy. (Psalm 43:3–4)

So, the psalmist identifies God as his exceeding joy, which the ESV, the NASB, the King James Version all translate “exceeding joy.” The Hebrew (śim-ḥaṯ gî-lî) has two different words for joy or happiness or pleasure. Literally, then, the phrase could be translated, “the joy of my gladness,” which in fact is exactly what’s in the margin of the old King James: “the joy of my gladness.” So, the question is, What does that literal phrase — “the joy of my gladness” — mean?

The ESV and the other versions take it to mean that, at least, he’s my best gladness. “The joy of my gladness” means, of all my gladness, he’s the best. And surely that’s right. I mean, at least it means that. God is supreme. God never made anything more valuable or more enjoyable than himself. So yes, God is our exceeding joy. That’s what it means to be God, I think, and that’s what it means to love God. But the question remains, Is that all the phrase means? Is there more implied in the phrase “joy of my gladness”?

Avoiding Idolatry

So, way back — I’m guiding our friend to where I actually said that (he said he couldn’t find it). Well, on February 26, 2006, it’s on the DG website on this text. I preached on this, and I remember it so clearly because it was twelve days after my prostate-cancer surgery. I chose this text precisely for that. So, way back on February 26, 2006, I preached on this, and here’s what I argued. I’ll quote two sentences:

God, who in all my rejoicing over all the good things that he has made, is himself, in all my rejoicing, the heart of my joy, the gladness of my joy. Every joy that does not have God as the central gladness of the joy is a hollow joy and, in the end, will burst like a bubble.

Now, the reason that insight is so important is because, without it, all our enjoyment of God’s gifts — the things that he’s made — would not honor God the way that enjoyment should. Or to put it in the form of a question, What keeps our enjoyment of pizza or friendship from being idolatry? That’s the question. Now, you could answer, “Because we always enjoy God more than pizza, and we always enjoy God more than friendship, and that keeps it from being idolatry.” And that’s true and that’s crucial. God is our exceeding joy, supreme joy.

“God is the best part of every joy if we are enjoying things rightly.”

But I think God intends to be glorified not only by being enjoyed more than pizza and more than friendship, but by being enjoyed in the very enjoyment of pizza and in the very enjoyment of friendship. I think God intends for us to enjoy his sweetness in the sweetness of chocolate, his saltiness in the saltiness of french fries, his juiciness in the juiciness of a sizzling steak, his friendship in the company of our friends, his brightness in the sunrise, and so on.

When Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:17, “Set [your hope] . . . on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy,” I don’t think he meant only, “Make sure you enjoy God more than everything he made,” but rather, “Make sure you enjoy God in everything he made” — under everything as the source of joy, over everything as superior joy, and in everything as the best part of the enjoyment of everything.

Thankfulness Is Not Enough

Now, you could also say that — and this is true — thankfulness for God’s gifts is another key to keep the enjoyment of God’s gifts from becoming god, to keep ourselves from becoming idolaters. To be consciously thankful that every legitimate pleasure in this life is a gift of God is a good thing. That’s a right thing. By all means, we should be thankful. It’s a sin to be ungrateful for every good thing God gives. Paul said in 1 Timothy 4:4, “Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.”

But here’s the issue. I want to push into this. Thankfulness is not enough to keep the enjoyment of God’s gifts from becoming idolatrous. Think with me about this. Why is that? Why is thankfulness not enough to keep God’s good gifts from being idols to us? It’s because we all know that someone may give us a gift we enjoy more than we enjoy the person who gave it. We know this.

Being thankful to God or anyone does not mean we love the giver more than the gift. It doesn’t. A cranky, mean-spirited old man may give you the gift you’ve wanted all your life, and you’re thankful. Yes you are. But you don’t like him. He’s cranky. He’s a mean-spirited old man. You’re not sure why he gave it to you, but he gave it to you, and you’ve wanted it all your life, so you’re thankful for it. If we’re going to glorify God in the enjoyment of his gifts, we have to go beyond thankfulness.

Taste and See, Smell and Feel

So, back to Psalm 43:4. “God is the joy of my gladness” means not only that he is better than the gladness I have in other things — that is, “my exceeding joy” — but that he is the best part of the gladness I have in other things. He’s the joy of my gladness. He is what makes the enjoyment of those other things more enjoyable.

When the psalmist says in Psalm 73:25, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” — wow, what a statement — he might mean, “I desire nothing above God.” He might mean that. But it sounds like he means, “I don’t desire anything on earth of which God is not the chief part.” “I don’t want to enjoy anything,” he’s saying, “which is not also an enjoyment of God.” I want to enjoy God in friendship. I want to enjoy God in eating. I want to enjoy God in the pleasures of the marriage bed. I want to enjoy God in music and reading and rising early to see the dawn.

Now, if we’re onto something here, let’s see what some other significant Christian thinkers have said about this. Here’s the way Thomas Traherne put it: “You never enjoy the world aright, till you see how a sand exhibiteth the wisdom and power of God: And prize in everything the service which they do you, by manifesting His glory and goodness to your Soul” (Centuries, 13–14). That’s not mere thankfulness. This is enjoying God in our enjoyment of what he has made. Every part of creation is designed by God to communicate something of God. And when we enjoy that part of creation, we are to savor God in it.

Here’s the way Augustine put it in his prayer: “He loves thee too little” — speaking to God — “who loves anything together with thee, which he loves not for thy sake” (Confessions 10.29.40). Now, “for Thy sake” I take to mean this: we love what is not God properly by loving it for what we taste of God in it — not just out of thankfulness, but what we taste and see, smell and feel of God in it.

So, let us go with the psalmist to the altar of God — that is, to the cross of Jesus Christ — and enjoy the forgiveness of sins that he purchased there. And through that gift, let us know and enjoy God as our exceeding joy — yes, and as the gladness of all our joys.

Mary Oliver once said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion” (Upstream, 8). Yet we struggle, don’t we, to set our minds on “the things of the Spirit” and “the things that are above, where Christ is” (Romans 8:5–6, Colossians 3:1–2)?

We know the mind attentive to the Spirit is “life and peace,” yet we’d blush to admit how often we reach for the empty stimuli of social media and news feeds. And it’s easy to wring our hands and declare that we’re uniquely handicapped by our Age of Distraction and the relentless competition for our attention. Are we really defenseless, though, doomed to distracted, ever-scrolling minds?

In my own war against distractions, I find hope and help in saints who lived centuries before our digital age. Read slowly these words of Augustine, describing “the bridegroom who is beautiful wherever he is”:

He was beautiful in heaven, then, and beautiful on earth: beautiful in the womb, and beautiful in his parents’ arms. He was beautiful in his miracles but just as beautiful under the scourges, beautiful as he invited us to life, but beautiful too in not shrinking from death, beautiful in laying down his life and beautiful in taking it up again, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the tomb, and beautiful in heaven. (Essential Exposition of the Psalms, 131)

If we had a time machine and could pull this man taken by the beauty of his Beloved into our digital age, would the wild horses of iPhones and earbuds drag his attention from God? By no means. The way Augustine talks about Christ convinces me that he could not not be captive to God’s beauty. He’s held firm and undistracted by the same one-thing passion that captivated David:

One thing have I asked of the Lord,     that will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of the Lord     all the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. (Psalm 27:4)

Jonathan Edwards, another undistractable saint, found God not only beautiful but “the foundation and fountain of . . . all beauty” (Works, 8:551). In his sermon on “God’s Excellencies,” he told the congregation,

God is every way transcendently more amiable, than the most perfect and lovely of all our fellow creatures. If men take great delight and pleasure in beholding and enjoying the perfections and beauties of their fellow mortals, with what ecstasies, with what sweet rapture, will the sweet glories and beauties of the blessed God be beheld and enjoyed! (Works, 10:429)

Like Augustine, Edwards was enthralled by God’s beauty in Christ and would surely never trade those “sweet glories and beauties of the blessed God” for the empty cisterns of clickbait. The question is, would we? Can we ordinary saints living in the Age of Distraction be so captured by God’s beauty that we grow increasingly undistractable?

Beauty of All Things Beautiful

Before we answer, we should clarify what we mean by God’s “beauty.” Philosophers love to ponder the idea of beauty. When they meditate on what is truly beautiful, they are (perhaps without knowing it) granted glimpses of the God who is beautiful.

Beauty is the good, and God is most good (Psalm 119:68). Beauty delights and arouses desire, and God is our delight and the desire of our hearts (Psalm 37:4). Beauty displays perfection, and our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Beauty shines with radiance and splendor, and Christ is the radiance of our God who is clothed with splendor (Psalm 104:1; Hebrews 1:3).

Beauty resounds in harmony and unity, and the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit is the eternal perfection of harmony. Beauty is gratuitous, the way the dazzling colors of the sunset aren’t needed to mark the transition from day to night; and nothing is more gratuitous than the love of God in sending his Son to die for us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8). In short, beauty reminds us of God, “the Beauty of all things beautiful” (Augustine, Confessions, 3.6.10).

God’s beauty is a quality of his glory, and when we experience that quality, we are filled with delight and desire. We find him irresistibly lovely in our eyes, beyond compare (Psalm 89:6), and so we faint to be with him (Psalm 63). His beauty is what, when we have him, fills us “with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8).

Who Can See Such Beauty?

Not everyone sees God’s beauty. Some are “haters of God” that have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Romans 1:23, 30). That’s why Samuel Parkison says there is an aesthetic component to salvation: when the Spirit regenerates us, he enables us “to behold the beauty of the Trinity mediated in Christ.” This new ability to see God’s beauty isn’t mere intellectual perception; it “includes the affections,” so we are stirred and drawn by his beauty (Irresistible Beauty, 15).

John Piper clarifies, based on Ephesians 1:18 and 2 Corinthians 4:4, that this new capacity to behold God’s beauty is with the eyes of our hearts, our “spiritual eyes” (Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, 9–10). And as with other gifts and capacities we receive from the Spirit, we are “to fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Timothy 1:6). Our spiritual eyes must be sanctified, must mature and develop, must be tuned and calibrated, until we find Christ irresistibly beautiful wherever we see him. Therefore, cultivating our ability to “see and savor” the beauty of God in Christ is a means of grace in the war for our attention.

How to Cultivate Eyes for God

Because this power of the new heart is aesthetic, we could learn some things about attending to God’s beauty from those who teach art appreciation. Museum docents and artists could train us in “slow looking” and “immersive attention,” and those skills, reapplied to our meditations on God’s word, could help hone our gaze on the beauty of the Lord.

But God is not a painting or a statue. He is both beautiful and personal; his beauty leads us through and beyond appreciation and admiration to affection and devotion. We must unite the aesthetic and the personal, the way Georgia O’Keeffe did when she said, “To see takes time like to have a friend takes time.”

So, when I suggest that one of the best ways to grow in our appreciation of God’s beauty is to read theology, you might immediately do a double take. But after you stop scratching your head (and before you stop reading), listen to C.S. Lewis:

For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. (Introduction to St. Athanasius on the Incarnation, 10)

“The heart sings unbidden” when we work our way through the best theology because theology lays before us the goodness and perfections of God so that we see them — see him, our Beloved — more clearly.

Recommendations in Beauty

At its best, theology opens our eyes to the beauty of God in the Scriptures, elevating our Bible reading into an act of communion and love with our Lord as he pulls back the veil so that the eyes of our hearts behold the beautiful glory of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).

But, of course, not all books of theology make our hearts sing. Some are written by Dr. Dryasdust, with a specialized vocabulary and attention to subtle controversies that can keep the veil over our eyes. But there are theological writers, the heirs of Augustine and Edwards, who see the beauty of God and show it beautifully. J.I. Packer’s Knowing God and R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God filled my heart with music when I first read them. John Piper intentionally and faithfully follows in the footsteps of undistractable saints like Augustine and Edwards.

And then there are the English Puritans. Their seventeenth-century prose sometimes tests us, but they are expert guides to God’s beauty. John Owen summarized the goal of all their counsel and practice: “To encourage our hearts to give themselves up more fully to the Lord Jesus Christ, consider his glories and excellencies” (Communion with God, 59).

Read, Pray, Encounter

As exhilarating as theology at its best can be, it isn’t an end in itself. It is never meant to replace a direct encounter with God, the very subject of theology. To admire triune beauty in Christ is personal experience — it is to commune with him. So, when we read theology, let our reading be immersed in prayer, as the writing of it most surely was.

Let us learn to love our beautiful God in his personal revelation, for “love alone makes it possible for contemplation to satiate the human heart with the experience of supreme happiness” (Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, 82). And in that communion with God, we will be satisfied and find the undistracted “life and peace” that Paul calls us to (Romans 8:6), a daily foretaste of our eternal happiness, basking in the beauty of Christ:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

I stood at a friend’s kitchen sink, surprised and somewhat disturbed. My friend’s wife had taped a notecard on the wall behind the sink with some spiritual reminders. That in itself was nothing new: though still a young believer, I had seen such cards posted to desks, doors, bathroom mirrors, and the like. No, what surprised me was one particular reminder this young woman had chosen to write.

The exact words escape me, but the sense still burns in my memory: “You deserve hell.”

You deserve hell? On the one hand, I had no intellectual objection to the statement. I myself had recently come to see the darkness of my native heart. I had realized that I was not just mistaken or in need of occasional forgiveness, but actually hell-deserving — and hell-destined apart from the grace of Jesus.

But the notecard still disturbed me. Yes, we deserve hell, but should we recall the fact as often as we wash our hands? Should the reality of hell, and the remembrance that we once were headed there, stay warm in our minds?

I can certainly imagine someone thinking too much about hell. The unspeakable sorrow of eternal punishment, dwelt on overmuch, could overwhelm the sense of joy pulsing through the New Testament. But a recent survey of Paul’s letters leads me to think my friend’s wife was closer to his apostolic heart than my instinct to recoil.

We may not post reminders above our sinks, but somehow the thought needs to become more than passing and occasional. We deserve hell, and only one thing stands between us and that outer darkness: Jesus.

Remember Hell

When we turn to Paul’s letters, we actually notice something even more startling than the notecard over my friend’s sink. Regularly throughout his writings, the apostle not only reminds the churches of their formerly hopeless state; he also warns them of their ongoing danger should they drift from Christ. He says not only, “You deserve hell,” but also, “Make sure you don’t end up there.”

Consider just a few of Paul’s bracing warnings to the churches:

“If you live according to the flesh you will die” (Romans 8:13).
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” (1 Corinthians 6:9).
“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6).
“Put to death . . . what is earthly in you. . . . On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6).
“The Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you” (1 Thessalonians 4:6).

The situation becomes even more surprising when we consider Paul’s overall posture toward the believers in these churches. Paul was “satisfied” that the Romans were “full of goodness” (Romans 15:14). He was confident the Corinthians were “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:2). He saw the Ephesians as already seated with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–6); he rejoiced in the firmness of the Colossians’ faith (Colossians 2:5); he knew God had chosen the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:4).

And yet he warned. In fact, Paul places his warnings near the heart of his apostolic calling: “[Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28). So, amid his encouragements, and throughout his doctrinal instruction, and even as he exulted in the hope of glory, he would sometimes grow solemn and still, lower his tone, and turn his ink black.

“Dear brothers,” he would write in effect, “Christ is gloriously yours. But until you see him face to face, don’t imagine yourselves out of danger. Hell still awaits any who forsake him.”

Why Did Paul Warn?

Why did Paul warn his beloved churches, sometimes with unsettling sternness? A closer look at his warnings sheds some light. Among several purposes Paul had, we might consider three in particular that rise to the surface.

These three purposes are not limited to Paul’s apostolic calling, or even to the pastoral calling today. Pastors, as God’s watchmen, may have a special responsibility to blow eternity’s trumpet, but Paul and the other apostles expected all Christians to play their part in admonishing, exhorting, warning (Colossians 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; Hebrews 3:13).

So, as we consider when and why Paul warned of hell, we (pastors especially, but also all of us) learn when and why we should too.

1. To Alarm the Presumptuous

First, Paul warned of hell to alarm the presumptuous. Hell was a siren to awake spiritual sleepers, a large “Danger” sign for those drifting off the narrow way, a merciful thorn for feet too comfortable near the cliff of sin.

“We are never more in danger than when we think we are not.”

Despite Paul’s overall positive posture toward the churches, he knew that some in these communities were in danger of spiritual presumption. In Corinth, for example, some acted arrogantly when they should have felt fear and trembling (1 Corinthians 5:2). Some treated sexual immorality with frightful indifference (1 Corinthians 6:12–20). Some did not hesitate to haul their brothers to court (1 Corinthians 6:1–8).

They were growing numb and didn’t know it. So Paul sounded the warning:

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)

If a brother seems spiritually presumptuous; if exhortation and entreaty seem to land lightly; if his sin has become habitual, and his hand seems lifted higher and higher — he may need to hear a word about hell. At first, such a word may sound as unwelcome as an alarm awaking him from a deep and comfortable slumber. But if he is in Christ, then such a warning will have its God-intended effect in time. His initial offense or displeasure will give way to the dreadful realization that the house is on fire; he must escape.

By all means speak wisely, carefully, with the kind of trembling that fits so fearful a topic. But take courage from Paul, and believe that sometimes, love alarms.

2. To Protect the Vulnerable

Often when Paul warns of hell, however, he does not have presumptuous people in mind. Usually, these stern words come to beloved brothers and sisters whose faith seems firm, to churches like the Romans, the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians. Why does he warn such saints? He does so, in part, because as long as we are in this world, we are vulnerable to becoming deceived with what Paul calls “empty words” (Ephesians 5:6).

First-century societies, just like ours, had their broadly acceptable sins, their celebrated evils. They also had scoffers and false teachers who shrugged off the judgment to come. And Paul knew that, over time, such a society could subtly dull the Christian conscience. God’s people could slowly become swayed by “plausible arguments” (Colossians 2:4): “You really think God cares about what we do in our bedroom?” “How could so many people be wrong?” “You seriously expect God to judge something that so many do?”

Such questions, spoken or merely suggested by a pervasive societal mood, can create an atmosphere where hell sits uncertainly on the soul — where eternity becomes a vague, weightless idea, a peripheral thought that holds little power against the most popular sins of the day. That is, unless we regularly hear Paul (or a pastor or friend) say, “Let no one deceive you” (Ephesians 5:6). No matter how common, no matter how lauded, “The Lord is an avenger in all these things” (1 Thessalonians 4:6).

We need such warnings today, perhaps especially from our pulpits. What sins are so normal throughout our cities, so typical in entertainment, so characteristic of our own pasts that we are in danger of becoming numb to their hell-deserving guilt? Pornography and fornication? Casual drunkenness? Love of money and luxuries? Internet reviling?

If the vulnerable among us (and to some degree, we’re all vulnerable) are going to see the deep pit at the end of such well-traveled paths, then someone needs to point it out — and not only once.

3. To Humble the Mature

Finally, and maybe most surprising of all, Paul warned of hell not only to alarm the presumptuous and protect the vulnerable, but also to humble the mature. No matter how strong others seemed, Paul did not think they were too strong for danger, too firm to fall. He knew the most established believer stands just a few yards away from spiritual peril, and just a few more yards from spiritual ruin. So, he writes, “Do not become proud, but fear” (Romans 11:20).

Remarkably, Paul counted himself among those in need of such warnings. Hear the great apostle admonish his own soul: “I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:26–27). Can you imagine Paul disqualified? Can you fathom the mighty missionary, the bold church planter, the zealous apostle barred from heaven? He could.

I recently encountered this rare apostolic spirit in a letter from Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813–1843), who wrote to a friend and fellow minister,

I charge you, be clothed with humility, or you will yet be a wandering star, for which is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. . . . If you lead sinners to yourself, and not to Christ, Immanuel will cast the star out of His right hand into utter darkness. (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 130)

Why speak so to a fruitful, faithful, mature minister of Christ? Because M’Cheyne (and Paul before him) knew the paradoxical nature of Christian perseverance: We are never more in danger than when we think we are not. And we are never safer than when we feel our weakness, distrust our strength, and lean hard upon the arm of our Lord Jesus. “He that walketh humbly walketh safely,” John Owen writes (Works, 6:217). And he who remembers hell walks humbly.

Him We Proclaim

Consider again Paul’s description of his apostolic calling in Colossians 1:28: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” We have focused here on Paul’s warnings, but we dare not miss the context in which they come.

Hell was not the main theme of Paul’s ministry. Unlike some fire-and-brimstone preachers, he did not thunder forth the judgment to the neglect of other doctrines or in ways that sunk others into all-consuming fear. He did not write, “Hell we proclaim,” but “Him we proclaim” — Christ.

Why, ultimately, did Paul warn of hell? Because Jesus was too wonderful, too marvelous not to use every righteous means available to “present everyone mature in Christ,” to win people to him and keep people near him. Others needed to know the danger of hell because they needed to know the danger of missing eternal life with him. Warnings were his way of casting us into the arms of Christ, the safest place in all the world.

And so he warned. And so the wise remember, in one way or another, that we deserve hell, and that we are not (for now) beyond the danger of hell. Read it in Scripture; say it to your soul; write it over your kitchen sink if you must. Think of hell long enough and often enough to keep you close to Jesus, humble and happy and hoping in him.

One of the more controversial issues in missions today is speed. How quickly do we expect the lost to be saved? How soon will new churches plant new churches? How fast should a new believer move into a leadership role? How long should cross-cultural missionaries work on learning a language?

In our times, we will do well to carefully interrogate our assumptions about speed and pace. Our internal speedometers are being conditioned to the quickening pace of modern life with its rapid flow of technological innovations. So, in our “age of accelerations,” pressing questions relate to speed — not only for effective Christian mission but simply for healthy Christian lives. Will we be driven by the hurried pace of our world? Or, with the help of God’s word and his Spirit and his church, will we find a more timeless (and human) pace for life and mission — a pace that has produced health and fruit across the ages?

In his book Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global, Andy Johnson says this: “The work of missions is urgent, but it’s not frantic” (67). That’s good, and the same is true of the Christian life and of the health and growth of our own souls.

Unhurried Habits of Jesus

So, let’s sit together at the feet of Jesus, and consider the pace and patterns of his life and ministry. He was not idle. Nor was he frenzied. From all we can tell from the Gospels, Jesus’s days were full. I think it would be fair to say he was busy, but he was not frantic. He lived to the full, and yet he did not seem to be in a hurry.

In Jesus, we observe a human life with holy habits and patterns: rhythms of retreating from society and then reentering to do the work of ministry. Even as God himself in human flesh, Jesus prioritized time away with his Father. He chose again and again, in his perfect wisdom and love, to give his first and best moments to seeking his Father’s face. And if Jesus, even Jesus, carved out such space in the demands and pressures of his human life, what might we learn from him, and how might we do likewise?

Now, we have only glimpses of Jesus’s habits and personal spiritual practices, but what we do have is by no accident, and it is not scant. We know exactly what God means for us to know, in just the right detail — and we have far more about Jesus’s personal spiritual rhythms than we do about anyone else’s in Scripture.

And the picture we have of Christ’s habits is not one that is foreign to our world and lives and experience. Rather, we find timeless and transcultural postures that can be imitated and applied by any follower of Jesus, anywhere in the world, at any time in history.

So, what might those be? Let’s look at three.

1. Jesus retreated and reentered.

Jesus made a habit of withdrawing from the world (and the engagements of fruitful ministry), and then reentering later to do more good.

So too, the healthy Christian life is neither solely solitary nor constantly communal. We learn to withdraw, like Jesus, “to a desolate place” to commune with God (Mark 1:35), and then we return to the bustle of daily tasks and seek to meet the needs of others. We carve out a season for spiritual respite — in some momentarily sacred space — to feed our souls, enjoying God there in the stillness. Then refilled, we enter back in to be light and bread to a hungry, harassed, and helpless world (Matthew 9:36).

For Christ, “the wilderness” or “desolate place” often became his momentarily sacred space. He got away from people. He regularly escaped the noise and frenzy of society to be alone with his Father, where he could give him his full attention and undivided heart.

There is, of course, that especially memorable instance in Mark 1. After “his fame spread everywhere” (Mark 1:28) the day before, and “the whole city was gathered together at the door” (Mark 1:33), Jesus took a remarkable step the next morning. He was up before the sun and slipped away from town to restore his soul in secret communion with his Father. “Rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35).

Given the fruitfulness of the previous day, some of us might scratch our heads. What a ministry opportunity Jesus seemed to leave behind when he left town! Surely some of us would have skipped or shortened our private spiritual habits to rush to the demands of the swelling masses. How many of us, in such a situation, would have the presence of mind and heart to discern and prioritize prayer as Jesus did?

The Gospel of Luke also makes it unmistakable that this pattern of retreat and reentry was part of the ongoing dynamic of Christ’s human life. Luke 4:42 tells us that Jesus “departed and went into a desolate place” — not just once but regularly. Luke 5:16: “He would withdraw [as a pattern] to desolate places and pray.”

So also Matthew 14:13. After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus “withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.” But even then, the crowds pursued him. And he didn’t despise them, but here he puts his desire to retreat on hold and has compassion on them and heals their sick (Matthew 14:14). Then after feeding them, five thousand strong, he withdraws again to a quiet place. “After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray” (Matthew 14:23).

This leads to a second principle — and not just that he withdrew but why. What did Jesus do when he withdrew?

2. Jesus withdrew to commune with his Father.

He got away from the distractions and demands of daily life to focus on, and hear from, and pray to his Father. At times, he went away by himself to be alone (Matthew 14:23; Mark 6:46–47; John 6:15). His disciples would see him leave to pray and later return. He went by himself.

But he also drew others into his life of prayer. The disciples had seen him model prayer at his baptism (Luke 3:21), as he laid his hands on the children (Matthew 19:13), and when he drove out demons (Mark 9:29). And Jesus brought his men into his communion with his Father. Even when he prayed alone, his men might be nearby. “Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him” (Luke 9:18; also Luke 11:1).

3. Jesus taught his disciples to do the same.

Jesus didn’t only retreat to be alone with God. He also taught his disciples to bring this dynamic of retreat and return, communion and compassion, into their own lives (Mark 3:7; Luke 9:10).

In Mark 6:31–32, Jesus invites his men to join him, saying, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” Mark explains, “For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.”

So too, in the Gospel of John, as his fame spreads, Jesus retreats from more populated settings to invest in his men in more desolate, less distracting places (John 11:54). And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches all his hearers, including us today, not only to give without show (Matthew 6:3–4) and fast without publicity (Matthew 6:17–18), but also to find our private place to seek our Father’s face: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). The reward is not material stuff later but the joy of communion with God there, in that moment, in the secret place.

Your Pace and Patterns

Jesus made a habit of retreating from the demands and pressures of everyday life and ministry, and he did so to commune with his Father, to hear his voice, and respond in prayer. And then Jesus reentered society to bless and teach and show compassion and love and do good. And he also invited his disciples into this pattern and taught them to do the same.

So, let’s close by asking about your pace and your patterns. First about pace, ask yourself, How deeply do the world’s assumptions and expectations about speed and productivity affect my life and ministry? How hurried is my life?

And your patterns. How about rhythms of retreat and reentry? Do you get away daily to commune with God in his word and prayer, in an unhurried, even leisurely way — resting, restoring your joy, feeding your soul in the grace of his presence? And what are your patterns or rhythms of life for retreating from the noise of the world to focus on and hear from the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and then come back to meet the needs of others?

Is the God you think of day to day much happier than you? Do you think the Father bright and abundant or rather frownful and displeased? Does he enjoy his Life? Or is he just a tad bored, waiting for you to cheer him up a bit? What is your God like? We smile less than we might, because we feel little warmth from the smiling God.

We have heard the good news of the holy God, the just God, the three-in-one God, the mighty and compassionate, the faithful and all-wise, the loving and prayer-hearing and covenant-keeping God — but what of the happy God, the blessed God? If we look forward to “enjoying him forever,” do we not first need to be convinced that he is enjoyable? And can a King who stifles song or laughter really satisfy our souls (though he be otherwise strong and wise and good)? Do we color the God of Beauty grey, imagining him who makes the seraph burn and the bird warble to be the Sovereign Eeyore in these Hundred Acre Woods?

Gospel of God’s Happiness

Again, the inescapably personal question: Is your God happy? Is he deeply pleased, eternally bright, the waterfall cascading the edges and satisfying your adopted soul, if born again you be? Can you join to sing,

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,God of glory, Lord of love;Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,Opening to the sun above.

I want my heart to unfold more sweetly, more fully. So, let’s gaze up at the brilliance of the divine happiness together. As with the apostle John, if everything were to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books (John 21:25). Most must be omitted, but even as a little honey can brighten the eyes, a few glimpses of his happiness can freshen our joy in him.

His Pleasure Precedes Us

Mercifully, the Arkenstone jewel of God’s happiness is not the creature — his perfect, holy, complete joy precedes us. God’s happiness is infinite and eternal and untainted precisely because it is independent — he draws from wells we knew not of, that which always was and always will be.

Survey the pantheon of gods, and here alone we find the only Being that can satisfy the soul forever. A fulsome ocean surges within himself — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — waters of bliss that he invites the redeemed to swim within. God has never been needy or lonely or bored. The salvation of man is a subplot, a minor theme, within an eternal drama of Trinitarian love. Baffling man-centric theologies, John Piper writes,

Within the triune Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), God has been uppermost in his own affections for all eternity. This belongs to his very nature, for he has begotten and loved the Son from all eternity. Therefore, God has been supremely and eternally happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. (Collected Works, vol. 2, 48–49)

Here we find our glad tidings: His happiness does not depend upon us — thus he can satisfy us. None can pickpocket his pleasure. Not Satan, not the world, not our sin. “It should delight us beyond all expression,” writes Henry Scougal, “to consider that the one who is beloved in our own souls is infinitely happy in himself and that all his enemies cannot shake or unsettle him from his throne” (Life of God in the Soul of Man, 83). The triune God’s delight cannot sag or wobble; his cheerful crown cannot topple from his brow. He does not sink into despair.

Gladness Who Creates

If eternity were an apartment, God did not need a pet to keep him company. The triune God needed nothing upon which to dote or depend. His golden existence never borrows from other suns.

Yet we read, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) — why? If he is so happy and blessed, why create anything at all? Because God delights to share his fullness, his happiness, his life, his love, his glory — not to complete that fullness, but to extend it to others.

“There is an expansive quality to his joy,” writes Piper. “It wants to share itself. The impulse to create the world was not from weakness, as though God were lacking in some perfection that creation could supply.” To quote Jonathan Edwards, “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow.” Again, Piper writes, “All his works are simply the spillover of his infinite exuberance for his own excellence” (Works, 49).

In the beginning, then, God created the heavens and the earth freely, bountifully, happily. He looked down as an artist painting — stars, fish, mountains, man — “Oh, that is good!” He creates and admires and gives and fills and blesses from a full cupboard.

Delight Comes for Us

The God who didn’t need you to be happy, the heaven within himself that needed not angels or humans, sacrificed to include us in that happiness. He came for us.

The God who did not need us chose us — and at total cost to himself. The blessedness of God increases the gospel’s voltage. If God had thrown all into the lake of fire, downed Adam and Eve in a flood, and moved on, God would have lost nothing. But the great I Am — rising from his own good pleasure as Giver, for his own great name of Love, growing from the everlasting heart of a Father — authored a story, perilous and splendid, full of darkness and light, to communicate himself more fully, and exalt his Son, and so fill our cup to overflowing.

“God’s happiness does not depend upon us — thus he can satisfy us.”

Ours is not just the gospel of God, but “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11). Rightly do angels longingly gaze after it. When time ripened, the eternal Son came. Begrudgingly? Reluctantly? Indifferently? “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19–20).

Glimpses of eternal rays pierce through at Jesus’s baptism and transfiguration. The Father’s supreme delight shone down upon his Son: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased” (Matthew 12:18; 3:17; 17:5). “Father,” Jesus prayed on the eve of his death, “I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

The Son’s whole drama — sung to us as good news — plays out in a theater of eternal love: The Father to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Spirit lifting the elect to dwell in those clouds.

Happiness Brings Us Home

The God who does not need us to be happy himself promises to make his people happy forever. At the end of our weak service, the Master says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23). Enter into the paradise of triune bliss, the Promised Land of milk and mirth, of honey and happiness.

Does your God invite you into his own joy? I find the unfaithful servant of the story instructive. The Master gave him one talent, and he went and buried it. Why did he bury it away?

Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours. (Matthew 25:24–25)

He did not know the Master who invites into his own joy. The Master who smiles and says, “Well done.” He harbored hard thoughts, buried his talents under hard ground, and received a hard wage: “You wicked and slothful servant! . . . Take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. . . . And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:26, 28, 30).

How vital it is to know God’s heart. How many talents hide beneath mounds of dirt in our backyards? Do you believe you serve a hard and extorting God? Believer, come to the open window and gaze through Jesus’s words: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Stir at your God’s vow: “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul” (Jeremiah 32:41). Quiet under his singing:

The Lord your God is in your midst,     a mighty one who will save;he will rejoice over you with gladness;     he will quiet you by his love;he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)

Orthodox of Heart

Brother or sister in Jesus, the God you serve from day to day, is he happy? Not just holy, powerful, righteous, or wise, but happy? Not flustered, standoffish, or unimpressed, but happy?

“Is it not a pity,” asks Richard Baxter, “that our hearts are not as orthodox as our heads?” Yes, it is a pity. Oh, how our hearts would burst. How fiercely his happiness would arm us against worldliness. How carelessly we would laugh off lesser pleasures of lust and pride. How we would dare to take greater risks with our talents, empowering evangelism and world missions.

When we see the heights and depths of God’s happiness, how can commands such as “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” seem unreasonable (Philippians 4:4)? How can we resist the psalmist’s summon, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!” (Psalm 100:1–2)? How can we not endure unwanted trials knowing that we shall soon be before our Lord in whose “presence there is fullness of joy” and at whose “right hand [there] are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11)?

A few more days, a few more sorrows, a few more disappointments, and then . . .

Audio Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the podcast on this Thursday. Well, what is love? That’s a timeless question. As you know, Pastor John, from time to time we get questions about the nature of love — God’s love for us, our love for God, our love for each other — and what it means that “God is love,” as 1 John 4:8 tells us. On top of this, we get questions about how joy relates to love, too, which is part of what we mean by Christian Hedonism. You mentioned a while back that you were working through 2 Corinthians recently and saw something that relates to all of these questions that I just mentioned and ties them all together in a surprising way. Can you summarize your discovery from 2 Corinthians and explain how it touches on all those questions about love and joy?

I can try. And it was surprising not only because, for being so simple, it has vast implications for the very nature of God himself, and how he loves himself, and how we love him, and how he loves us — but also, it was surprising because what I saw was not found in some high-soaring part of Paul’s writings, but rather in a very down-to-earth, practical interaction with the Corinthians about his travel plans. You don’t expect to find vast implications about the nature of reality as somebody’s talking about their travel plans.

Paul’s Joy and Theirs

Let me read 2 Corinthians 2:1–4 and make three observations as we go through this text. And these three observations are just mind-blowingly vast in their implications.

1. Their joy is his joy.

Here’s what he wrote: “I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you.” And then he gives the reason for why he’s not going to make a sorrowful, painful visit to them. He says, “[Because] if I cause you [sorrow], who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have [grieved]?” (2 Corinthians 2:1–2).

“In the fellowship of the Trinity, before there were any people to love, God was love. God was loving God.”

So, the first observation I make is that the reason Paul decides not to make a painful visit is because, if their joy goes down, Paul’s joy goes down, which implies that their joy is in some measure Paul’s joy. He finds his joy in their joy. If theirs goes up, his goes up; if theirs goes down, his goes down. That’s observation number one. Paul’s joy is in some measure theirs, or theirs is in some measure his, so that if theirs goes down — which a painful visit would cause — his would go down. He doesn’t want that, so he doesn’t go.

2. His joy is their joy.

He goes on, “And I wrote as I did” — so he’s writing this letter instead of going — “so that when I came I might not suffer [sorrow] from those who should have made me rejoice.” Now, why did Paul not want to be made sorrowful? I mean, you might think, Well, that’s obvious. But no, it’s not obvious. Listen — why did Paul not want to be made sorrowful? He says this: “[Because] I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all” (2 Corinthians 2:3).

So, my second observation is that the reason Paul wrote a letter instead of making this painful visit is that his joy was their joy. That’s what he says. I’m not even drawing it out as an implication. He just says it: “my joy would be the joy of you all.” So, if his joy goes down by a painful visit, their joy is going to go down, because his joy is, in some measure, he says, their joy. That’s my second observation.

3. Love finds joy in others’ joy.

Now, here’s the rest of the text, 2 Corinthians 2:4. He describes the same desire now — not to make a painful visit, but to write instead — only this time in terms of being motivated not by joy but by love. Here’s what he says: “For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you [sorrow] but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.”

So, my third observation is that, in Paul’s mind, love means finding our joy in the joy of the other, the beloved. He didn’t want their joy to be undermined because their joy was his joy. And he didn’t want his joy to be undermined because his joy was their joy. And then he steps back and says, “That’s what it means to love you.”

We know Paul is writing as a Christian and, from other things that he says even in this book, that Christian joy is joy that has God in Christ as its focus. So, the definition of love that he gives here is this: love is finding our joy in the joy of the beloved in God. When they have joy in God, that’s our joy, and we’re willing to lay down our lives to bring about their joy in God. God is willing to lay down his life to bring about our joy in God.

Love Within the Trinity

Now, we need to step back and test this, to see if we’re onto something here, and I think we’re onto something vastly significant.

Let’s start by testing it with ultimate love. “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Before there was creation, God was God, and God was love. Which means that in the fellowship of the Trinity, before there were any people to love, God was love. And in the fellowship of the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — God was loving God. In Matthew 3:17, God says to his Son, “This is my loved Son” (my translation). And then he says, “With [him] I am well pleased” — that is, delighted, joyful. That’s what it means for the Father to love the Son. “I enjoy my Son infinitely. He is perfectly enjoyable, and that’s what it means to love him.” It says the same thing in John 14:31 about the Son loving the Father.

So, within the Trinity, to love is to be infinitely pleased, infinitely delighted, infinitely joyful with each other. And what makes them pleasing? What is it that makes the Father pleasing to the Son and the Son pleasing to the Father? What makes them pleasing is that they are the kind of person — each one of them is the kind of person — who is perfectly pleased by what is perfectly pleasing. That’s what it means to be righteous, holy, just, good — namely, God. They find their joy in the joy of the beloved in God. The Father delights in the Son because the Son is perfectly delighting in the Father (and vice versa). So, the definition that Paul used works eternally in the Godhead.

Love Between God and Us

Now, what about God’s love for us? Here’s Psalm 147:10–11: “[God’s] delight . . .” Get that fixed in your mind: God’s delight. What delights God? “[God’s] delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure . . . in those who hope in his steadfast love.” Now, if hope is longing for and expecting something in the future that you delight in — that would make you happy — then this psalm teaches that God delights in those who delight in him. That is, divine love for us is God’s finding his joy in our joy in him. And we may add then, acting: God acts to secure our joy in him, and he acts at the cost of his own Son’s life, which is what the Bible underlines about the amazing aspect of this love.

“Love is finding our joy in the joy of the beloved in God — and our willingness to die to bring that about.”

What about our love for God? First Timothy 1:11 says that God is a happy God, a blessed God (makarios). And we’ve seen that, in the fellowship of the Trinity, God is a happy God. He’s delighting in the fellowship of the Trinity. God is an eternally happy God. So, for us to love God is to be glad that he is God. To love God is to say, “God, you are God, and I am glad, and you satisfy me. You are wonderful. You are perfect. I adore, I treasure, I am satisfied in you.” And our love for God, then, is to find our joy in God’s joy, which is joy in God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Love Between Us and Others

One more application. What about our love for each other? In 2 Corinthians 8:2, Paul says that the Macedonians had an abundance of joy in the grace of God. It was abundant; it was overflowing. And then he calls it love in 2 Corinthians 8:8 when this joy — this joy in grace, in God’s grace — overflows in generosity to the poor saints in Jerusalem.

And what is generosity? Generosity is the eagerness to give so that others experience more joy. That’s what you do when you’re generous. You want people to be bettered. You want them to have more joy, more lasting joy, deeper joy in what should give them the deepest joy — in this case, more joy in life (they were poor, they were suffering, they were dying). He wants more joy in life and more joy in God as they live. So, love is the overflow of the Macedonians’ joy as it expands to include the poor saints in Jerusalem in that very joy in God’s grace.

So, to my amazement, Tony — and I’m still blown away by this — a simple definition of love, turning up in Paul’s explanation of his travel plans in 2 Corinthians 2, turns out to be just about as profound and far-reaching as it can possibly be. Love is finding our joy in the joy of the beloved in God — and our willingness to die to bring that about — which proves to be the essence of love in the Trinity, love in God for us, our love for God, and our love for each other. And it shows how central joy is in defining ultimate reality.

Part 1 Episode 221 Why does it matter that Jesus is called both the apostle and high priest of our confession? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper turns to Hebrews 3:1–6 to show how these two titles meet our two greatest needs.

During our family’s first time through Andrew Peterson’s four-book series The Wingfeather Saga, I found myself carefully paying attention to one person more than any other: Nia Wingfeather. By the time we were rereading the series for the third and fourth times, I had to resist the urge to take notes on this courageous and queenly (albeit imperfect) mother. Her womanly valor, her fearless sacrifices, and her ability to bring out the best in men have spurred me on in my own callings as wife and mother.

Bravery in the Kitchen

For the uninitiated, Peterson’s saga traces the unforgettable Wingfeather family, particularly the three children, as they run from the Fangs of Dang, from the Overseer of the Fork Factory, and worst of all, from Gnag the Nameless.

We get one early glimpse of Nia’s savvy courage when she is faced with the capture of her son by the wicked Fangs of Dang — cursed creatures, men who have willingly been transformed into wretched beasts. In their twisted existence, their appetites are insatiable, but not for good food, only for all that is rotting and putrid. Nia negotiates the release of her son: “I told him I could cook the finest maggotloaf in the four seas and that if he let you go, I’d cook it for him every third day of the week once the meat had plenty of time to fester” (On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, 68).

Her quick thinking reminds me of women like Jael, who lures her enemy in, gives him milk, and covers him with a blanket before crushing him — or Abigail, who brings enough food for an army, accompanied by her own gracious words, to calm David and divert him from violence. Nia, though fictional, shows us a particularly feminine kind of think-on-your-feet bravery. She acts on behalf of her child, but she does not confront danger directly (for she would have surely lost); instead, she comes at the problem creatively. She proceeds to make the aforementioned maggotloaf to satiate the appetite and the anger of the Fangs.

This type of feminine bravery is quite different from the bossy, brash, beat-up-the-boys counterfeit we see in so many movies today. Nia is a brave woman — not a manly woman — and she solves problems accordingly.

Fearless in Sacrifice

Later in the saga, Nia’s second son has undergone the same sort of horrible transformation that the Fangs had. He is a beast, but still a boy. With her husband assumed dead, her life centers on helping her son become the man he should be, despite this irreversible change. When the people of the Hollows wish to cast her son out, she invokes Turalay, the law of pardon in the Green Hollows, and is warned, “You hold your life forfeit for his, and should he break the life laws of the Green Hollows, from this day forward, it is not only his blood that will be shed, but yours” (The Monster in the Hollows, 67–68)

“A mother’s willing release can put steel in the spine of young men.”

On the surface, we may think she is confident simply that her son will somehow overcome his beastly reality, that she knows all will be well. But Nia’s trust is deeper. She trusts her Maker, even if her son were to do the unthinkable and break the life laws of the Hollows. She binds her fate to her son because she trusts her Maker’s purposes and does not fear death. And in tying her life to his, she strengthens his weak frame and plants seeds of hope in his heart.

Multiplying the Courage of Men

If there is one visceral driving force in mothers, it is the desire to nurture and protect. This natural, God-given instinct, however, can give way to fear-soaked overprotection. “Safety first!” can undergird almost every decision mothers make. Nia, however, taps into a rare feminine virtue — the cheerful willingness to forsake safety now for the better hope of raising courageous future men.

As Nia’s oldest son nears his thirteenth birthday, he approaches a rite of passage for boys called the “blindplop.” After being stuffed full of food on his birthday, he is left alone, deep in the woods, in the middle of the night. His guild master leaves him his pack and a letter saying,

No one is watching over you, ready to rescue you as soon as things get difficult. . . . That means you’re on your own. Of course, if you don’t show up at Ban Rona for a week or so, we’ll send out a search party to bring you home, though there probably won’t be much of you left. Your mother grew up here; she knows how it works, and she’s given me her full permission. I expected to have to talk her into the blindplop, but she agreed without hesitation. That should make you feel some pride, boy. (The Warden and the Wolf King, 20)

A mother’s willing release can put steel in the spine of young men. When a mother confidently blesses her son’s launch into the world — whether in small matters, like persevering in hard work, or in large changes, like moving far away, independent of her — her blessing is like a current of wind that pushes his sails farther and faster and straighter than he would have otherwise gone. But when mothers coddle and hover, doing all they can to keep sons from any whiff of danger or failure or pain, they nurture vice rather than virtue.

Strong Men and Their Fearless Wives

Yet it isn’t just sons who are bolstered by the appropriate confidence of their mothers. Husbands, too, can be inspired by the trust and assurance of their wives. Nia’s husband, Esben, is mortally wounded after a heroic effort to stand between the Fangs and his family. Yet even as his blood pools around him, and he begins to sink to the ground, she issues an urgent but steadfast reminder not to give in to death — not yet. “Our children need you, my king” (The Monster in the Hollows, 332). And he rouses himself once more to do what seemed impossible, to do what she could not do — to rescue their children from the enemy at the cost of his life. Her words beckon his courage.

A woman’s respect multiplies the courage of men, not with manipulation or fear, but with loyalty, hope, and abiding trust. To be a woman of valor is to be a woman who is free — free from the chains of fear because her security is fixed in her Maker. And it is free, fearless women who are best equipped to call forth and inspire the masculine strength and courage of Christ in the godly men around them. The world desperately needs such men — and such women.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. We regularly take up questions on things like church-state separation, on political activism, on Christians and patriotism, on US flags in the sanctuary — things like that. Here’s another question on this theme from a listener named Matthew in Cincinnati.

“Pastor John, hello to you. Years back, you posted a tweet online that I printed out, kept, and would like you to expand on now. You posted the following on April 17, 2021, starting with Mark 6:18: ‘For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.”’ A very bold text of John speaking truth to power to confront Herod’s adultery. Then you said this: ‘By all means be willing to lose your life to speak the truth to power. But always keep in mind the vast difference between this and political flag-waving.’ Can you expound on this? What marks this vast difference between speaking the truth to power and political flag-waving? What factors distinguish the two, in your mind? And is this mainly an unseen heart issue we must be warned about?”

Let me begin by giving six descriptions of what I mean by “political flag-waving” that should be avoided, and then turn and try to say something constructive about speaking truth to power.

Don’t Wave That Flag

So, in the tweet, I said, “By all means be willing to lose your life to speak the truth to power. But always keep in mind the vast difference between this and political flag-waving.” And here’s what I mean by “political flag-waving” in that assertion.

Keep in mind that I’m treating political flag-waving here as a bad thing, even though I know that there is a definition of political flag-waving that’s not a bad thing. I’m not talking about that. So, to make that clear, I’m going to use the word bad to designate the political flag-waving I’m talking about. And I’ll describe good political flag-waving in just a minute. Here’s what I mean by bad political flag-waving.

1. Bad political flag-waving means waving the flag of partisan loyalty — that is, party loyalty — as a final allegiance and ultimate allegiance. That’s bad.

2. Bad political flag-waving means asserting a moral or social position without making a clear difference between standing for the position and standing for the party that may also stand for the position. Are you standing for the position, or are you standing for the party? Make the distinction.

3. Bad political flag-waving means expressing an undue hope for the common good in the strategies of partisan politics. Now, there are aspects of common good that can indeed come through partisan politics. Yes, there are. But there’s also an undue, unwarranted level of hope that is to be avoided.

4. Bad political flag-waving means grounding moral stands in partisan platforms rather than in a biblical worldview.

5. Bad political flag-waving reflects a mistaken conviction that moral change will come to a population through political action or partisan advocacy. It won’t.

6. Bad political flag-waving means foregrounding partisan politics in settings where they do not belong — for example, in Christian worship. Making the case for a party’s political platform belongs, for example, at the national convention of the party. That’s where you can wave your flag properly, but not in Christian worship.

So, that’s some of what I wanted us to avoid when I said, “By all means be willing to lose your life to speak the truth to power. But always keep in mind the vast difference between this and political flag-waving.”

What Separation?

Now, what about truth to power? At this point, it seems to me we really need to clarify the phrase “separation of church and state.” Wherever you say, “Speak truth to power,” people wonder if you’re trying to establish your religion as one that the government should get behind with force and with the sword. Is that what you’re doing when you say, “Speak truth to power” — trying to insert your own religion as a religion that the government would use its sword to establish or defend?

“Speaking truth to power in a truly Christian way is always a call to repent and trust the forgiving grace of Jesus.”

So, we need to clarify the phrase “separation of church and state.” And it seems to me that this phrase is surrounded by confusion today. I think it’s always been surrounded by confusion, and I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault in particular. It’s just one of those American shibboleths that is intrinsically ambiguous. So, when we have a phrase like that — and there are lots of them — those who use them (like me right now) have an obligation to give some guidance as to what they mean by that phrase. You can’t just sling it about as if everybody knows what you’re talking about.

Last June, I published an article at Desiring God called ‘My Kingdom Is Not of This World’, in which I tried to give a careful, biblically argued statement of separation of government force and religious establishment, which I think is right at the heart of the issue. Here’s the thesis — I’ll just read it.

The thesis of this essay is that Jesus Christ, the absolutely supreme Creator, Sustainer, and Ruler of the universe, intends to accomplish his saving purposes in the world without reliance on the powers of civil government to teach, defend, or spread the Christian religion as such. Followers of Christ should not use the sword of civil government to enact, enforce, or spread any idea or behavior as explicitly Christian — as part of the Christian religion as such. . . . It is precisely our supreme allegiance to the lordship of Christ [not owing to any kind of secular neutrality] that obliges us not to use the God-given sword of civil government to threaten the punishment, or withhold the freedoms, of persons who do not confess Christ as Lord.

So, the implication of that is this: no human government should ever use its biblical right to wield the sword to enforce a religion or to oppose a religion as such. And the reason I used the phrase as such is to distinguish that bad action of forceful establishment or forceful maintenance of religion from the good action of creating laws that might fit the morality of a religion but not at all be part of prescribing or proscribing a religion as such.

Truth to Power — and Weakness

With that background in place, I say again that it is not only a Christian’s right but a Christian’s calling to speak truth to power and to speak truth to weakness and to everybody in between.

We should tell the president of the United States, and we should tell the panhandler on the street, “‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved’ (Acts 16:31). If you don’t believe, Mr. President, Mr. Panhandler, you are under the wrath of God. Stop killing babies in the womb. Stop doing drugs on the street. ‘Do justice . . . love kindness . . . walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8).” We should say that and a hundred other things. We are the voice of Scripture when we faithfully read and speak what the Bible teaches.

Even though the kind of obedience that pleases God is only possible in the power of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ, nevertheless, we call everyone — believer and unbeliever — to the highest biblical standard of attitude and behavior, because we call everyone to repent and trust Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit. We don’t just isolate behavior and pray that presidents and panhandlers would do right behavior. We want them to believe and to be full of the Holy Spirit, and then act that behavior in a way that pleases God through faith. Speaking truth to power in a truly Christian way is always a call to repent and trust the forgiving grace of Jesus.

Christians know that the greatest problem to be solved in every person’s life — from the president to the panhandler — is the problem of God’s wrath against them in their unforgiven sin. Therefore, the main thing that Christians speak to power is Romans 3:25: the propitiation of God’s wrath by the blood of Christ received through faith. So, I’ll say it again, just like I did in the tweet: By all means be willing to lose your life to speak the truth to power and weakness. But always keep in mind the vast difference between this and political flag-waving.

But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble? (A Grief Observed, 6)

C.S. Lewis penned these words as he struggled to deal with the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. Lewis here expresses the experience of many who have struggled to deal with genuine evil in their lives and have turned to God only to find him seemingly absent. This experience has sometimes been called the problem of divine hiddenness.

So, what causes this “absence” of God, as periodically experienced by so many, myself included? And how might we reckon with his absence so that we might find him again?

Willing the Absence

We can come at the question of divine hiddenness from two directions: first, from the “lived-absence of God,” and second, from the reality that God is not immediately apparent to our senses. Let’s take them one at a time.

For many, the absence of God is felt so profoundly because they are actively living as if God were absent in their day-to-day life. As odd as it may sound, this type of lived-absence of God occurs in the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike. Stephen Charnock describes this dynamic with the term practical atheism (The Existence and Attributes of God, 1:137–255). Many people, even self-professing Christians, live their lives as if there is no God.

Indeed, one cause of the deep impression of the absence of God may be the presence of unconfessed and unrepentant sin. Charnock suggests that to sin is to secretly desire the nonexistence of God. Thus, it should not be surprising that we experience a deep sense of the absence of God if we live in unconfessed sin. For this form of divine hiddenness, the appropriate remedy is the confession of sin and turning back to God.

Modern existentialism has turned this version of the lived-absence of God into a “philosophy.” In his work The Problem of God, John Courtney Murray describes how the modern existentialist affirms the absence of God: “He says that God must be absent. He asserts his fundamental will that God should be absent. The reason is obvious. . . . If God is present, man is being made by God, and he is being made a man . . . [with] a destiny which he himself did not choose” (117).

The modern existentialist affirms the absence of God, not because he has looked for him and failed to find him, but because, if God is present, then man is accountable to him. “Therefore God must be declared dead, missing, absent. The declaration is an act of the will, a basic will to the absence of God” (The Problem of God, 117). Here we find not existential dread in not finding God, but man actively willing the absence of God, so that he can live his life without divine constraints.

Abandoned and Alone

Another way we might sink into a lived-absence of God is related not to personal sin, but to a sense of having been abandoned in evil circumstances. Again, this absence is common to believers and unbelievers alike. We may become aware of divine hiddenness when evil suddenly looms large and, turning to God, we are shocked by his apparent absence.

This feeling is what Lewis describes in A Grief Observed, and what Elijah seems to have experienced when he fled from Jezebel to a cave in the desert (1 Kings 19). Joseph Minich captures this appearance of absence perfectly:

That we don’t see Him when we pray, that He often seems distant, that sometimes our prayers bounce off the ceiling, and especially for suffering people, that sometimes we can beg for Him to just “show Himself” to us, and He doesn’t — all of this causes us to feel or at least be tempted to feel that maybe His non-existence is the most “natural inference.” (Enduring Divine Absence, 3)

Invisible Not Absent

We see the second way of approaching divine hiddenness when the atheist sardonically points out that God could very easily resolve the question of his existence by simply “showing up.” Like Elijah when he confronted the prophets of Baal, the atheist mocks the believer, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (1 Kings 18:27). So, where is he?

Faced with such doubts and ridicule, many believers begin to wonder whether there is a God, while others withdraw from the discussion altogether, ashamed that there does not appear to be more irrefutable evidence of the presence of God. The doubts increase when we consider that God appears to have demonstrated his presence in the distant past through mind-blowing miracles, but we apparently arrived late to the show.

“We too easily overlook God’s presence precisely because it is so obvious.”

How, then, should we understand the distinct impression that God is missing? Fernand Van Steenberghen notes that we must first recognize that if there is a God (such as the God of Christianity), then we should not expect him to be “visible” (Dieu Caché, 348). Rather, suggests Van Steenberghen, “The living God is necessarily a hidden God. He is, by nature, the Inaccessible, the Invisible, the Impalpable, for He is Spirit (he escapes, indeed, all sensible experience) and he is Infinite, which is to say transcending the entire order of finite beings, of which we are an integral part” (Dieu Caché, 348, author’s translation).

In other words, we should remember that the God of Christianity is, by nature, not perceptible to the senses and far surpasses the very weak capacities of the human intellect. As such, though God’s presence is undeniable, it is also imperceptible except through the effects he causes.

Always, Already There

Furthermore, notes Van Steenberghen, God is hidden, even in his providential governance of the created cosmos, because his ways are a mystery to our finite minds (Dieu Caché, 348–49). Indeed, it could be said that God does not “intervene” in the created cosmos because he is always already present within it as its originating and sustaining cause (The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil, 74–77). We too easily overlook God’s presence precisely because it is so obvious.

If God is always already present, then he does not “intervene” (act from outside) as the owner of an aquarium might reach in, on occasion, to clean up a mess. Christianity teaches that in every natural event — whether it be the leaves falling from trees in the fall, snow falling in winter, flowers blooming in spring, or grass turning brown in the summer heat — God is always already present and active.

We don’t “see” God because the divine nature is invisible, but we do see God’s work, in every waking moment, in creation. As John Calvin said in his Institutes, “I have only wanted to touch upon the fact that this way of seeking God is common both to strangers and to those of his household, if they trace the outlines that above and below sketch a living likeness of Him” (1.5.6). For Calvin, God is so manifest in creation as its cause that man can scarcely open his eyes, or even daydream, without perceiving God’s causal efficacy in everything that presents itself to his senses.

In the end, recognizing God’s presence is less a question of perception or intellect, and more a question of volition. The sardonic question of the existence of God may be answered by willingly and openly considering the many wonders of this world, which, when we reflect upon them, demonstrate that there is a God and that he is always everywhere present.

Seek in Silence

Having examined the causes of divine hiddenness, how do we come to grips with the lived-absence of God? If, as we’ve seen, God is always already present, then why does he feel so absent when I “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4)? Isn’t God supposed to be my very present help in times of need (Psalm 46:1)? He is! Thankfully, the presence of God does not depend upon my ability to sense his presence. Whether I am aware of God’s presence or not, God is always already there.

There are many remedies for the lived-absence of God, one of which was discussed above: repentance and confession of sins. If, however, like Job, I have repented and confessed, and God still appears to be hiding from me, what can I do? One musician put it this way:

The way I feel keeps haunting me;It’s stronger than it was before.When darkness is fighting the light,I will be reaching out to you;I will be screaming out your name.No matter how far I fall away,I promise that I will reach for you. (Spoken, “Nothing Without You”)

Christ’s promise to those who cry out to him is that “the one who seeks finds” (Matthew 7:8). So, when we are plagued by the perceived absence of God, rather than sink into despair, we cry out to God, we wait on him in prayer, we raise our eyes to him in worship, we run to the church — Christ’s body — for support, we look for him in his word, and we remind ourselves of his presence by taking the Lord’s Supper.

Sometimes, perhaps all too often, God allows us to feel his absence because we have forgotten him. He allows us to feel his absence and silence, not as a refusal to answer, but as the compassionate gaze of the risen Christ waiting for us to remember that we need him.