As a type-A, calendar and to-do list kind of person, I like to remember that those who plan act a little like God.

We resemble, in some small measure, the Maker who built his world from a six-day blueprint. We share a likeness with him who “planned from days of old what now I bring to pass” (2 Kings 19:25). We embody in creaturely form the ways of him who acts beyond whim, against randomness, and always according to a “definite plan” (Acts 2:23). We are made in the image of a planning God, and those who plan act a little like him.

But wait a minute. As a type-A, calendar and to-do list kind of person, I need to remember something else too: sometimes, those who plan act a little too much like God.

Sometimes, we plan as if we were not vapor and mist, flower and grass, here by morning and gone by night. Sometimes, we reduce planning to prayerless reason and pro-con lists, tools of self-reliant minds. Sometimes, we don’t even say under our breath, “If the Lord wills . . .” (James 4:15). We are made in the image of a planning God, and those who plan sometimes take the image and forget the God.

So, as another calendar closes, and a year of blank days falls open before us, how might we reflect our planning God without planning as if we were God?

1. Plan like a mortal.

Whenever we plan, whether for next year or next week, we bring something of tomorrow into today. We run ahead on the trail of time, charting courses and planting flags, considering what we might do now to reach goals then. In the process, however, our imagined tomorrows can feel more real than they really are; we can find our hearts already inhabiting our future plans. But as James reminds us, we “do not know what tomorrow will bring.” We are “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). We are mortal.

Partly because eternity rests in our bones, and partly because lingering folly does too, we often fail to plan like mortals. We are mists who dream like mountains, lilies who plot like oaks. As we mentally walk the trails of tomorrow, deciding where we’ll go and what we’ll do, we forget that such trails may never be. Humility gives way to type-A “arrogance” (James 4:16).

Rightly felt, a sense of our mortality does not discourage planning, but it does chasten and reframe planning. When eternity presses close, we live (and plan) more wisely in time. We also remember what our best plans really are: drawings and rough drafts, penciled sketches at the mercy of God’s eraser. So, even as we think and scheme and dream as if we may have months or years ahead, we stamp every plan with mortal wisdom: “If the Lord wills” — and not otherwise — “we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15).

2. Plan like a child.

Pride can take several shapes in our planning. It can appear in our quickness to say, “I will . . .” rather than “If the Lord wills . . .” It can appear also in a prayerless reliance on our own reason.

I often need help remembering that Christian planning is never a matter of mere common sense. Of course, common sense holds great value (as much of Proverbs testifies), and most of us could stand to have more. But our world is too complex a place for pro-con lists to master. More than that, God’s own priorities are often too counterintuitive for worldly wisdom to trace.

Planners like me would do well to heed the words of John Newton: “It is a great thing indeed to have the spirit of a little child, so as to be habitually afraid of taking a single step without leading” (Letters of John Newton, 184). We are not only mortals — our time short, our days numbered. We are also children — our wisdom small, our foresight fallible. So, as those who know our own ignorance, who sense our utterly limited perspective and our proneness to plausible folly, we plan in the presence of God. We saturate planning with prayer.

We might, for example, root our planning in Paul’s prayer for the Philippians:

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. (Philippians 1:9–10)

Rightly done, planning is a way of looking at the competing claims for our time and attention, and approving not only what is good or worthy, but “what is excellent,” what is best. And approving what is best calls for more than common sense. We need nothing less than abounding, discerning love, a gift that comes from the Spirit in response to prayer.

3. Plan like a worshiper.

Praying as we plan may guard us from the pride that James warns so strongly against (James 4:16). But what about the next day, the next week, the next month, when we wake up with plan in hand, calendar filled, to-do list ready? How will we protect ourselves, in an ongoing way, from acting like immortal adults rather than mortal children? We can plan like worshipers.

Worshipers remember that, among all priorities, “one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). Among all requests, “one thing have I asked of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4). Among all ambitions, “one thing I do” (Philippians 3:13). Sit at Jesus’s feet. Behold his beauty. Press on toward heaven.

Worshipers not only saturate their planning with prayer; they also plan to saturate their days with prayer (and God’s other means of grace). Pursuing God becomes one of the main parts of their plans. What will Bible reading look like this year? When, where, and how will I commune with God in prayer? In what ways will I deepen my fellowship with brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers in my local church?

“Above all priorities, prioritize worship. At the heart of all plans, plan to pursue God.”

When we daily pursue God according to a prayerful, thoughtful plan, we will have a harder time taking our to-do lists too seriously. God’s providence, not our plans, will seem like our great unshakable guide. We will also find ourselves more attuned to when our priorities should change. As we seek him, the discerning love of God will often lead us to approve some excellence other than the one we had planned.

So, above all priorities, prioritize worship. At the heart of all plans, plan to pursue God.

4. Plan like a dreamer.

Can creatures of dust craft five-year visions? Can mists like us dare to imagine not just tomorrow but a thousand tomorrows? As long as we live like mortals, pray like children, and pursue God like worshipers, yes, we can. And indeed, sometimes love will compel us to do so. God created us “in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10), and some good works are so wonderfully audacious, so beautifully complex, they reach beyond the pages of this year’s calendar.

Consider a remarkable passage near the end of Romans, where Paul outlines his travel plans:

I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. (Romans 15:24–26)

In a time when traveling from Achaia to Jerusalem to Rome to Spain would have taken months and perhaps years, Paul outlines a surprisingly complicated, long-range plan. Of course, we know from Acts that Paul remained sensitive to God’s redirecting hand (Acts 16:6–10, for example), but he did not for that reason stop planning. With Christlike love burning in his heart, he set his sights across years and seas.

Some good works call for far-seeing vision, bold ambition, and the willingness to embark on a path whose end lies over the horizon. Global missions and church planting are two such good works. We could mention many others: adopting children, evangelizing a city, starting a God-glorifying business, ending abortion, even raising a child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Often in Scripture we find the wicked laying wicked plans (Esther 8:3; Psalm 21:11; 33:10; 62:4). Will not the righteous lay counter-plans for righteousness? Will we not think on our beds, and dream with open calendars, and dare to fill future days with penciled plans for good?

5. Plan like a sub-planner.

Perhaps the best test of a planner’s heart comes later, outside the moment of planning, when we realize that God’s plans were different from ours. “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21). And sometimes, even often, the purpose of the Lord undoes our plans.

Our God is the great intervener, the great redirector, the one who “frustrates the plans of the peoples” (Psalm 33:10) and who sometimes, for kind and wise reasons, frustrates our own plans as well. Our wisdom in such moments is to receive the frustration of our plans without frustration, to hold our torn to-do lists with humble, trusting hands — and in the more trivial cases, maybe with even a self-deprecating laugh.

Every ruined plan is an opportunity to remember that we are sub-planners, planners with a lowercase p. God gives us the dignity of dreaming — and sometimes too the gift of seeing dreams come true. But above that dignity, he gives the assurance that even when our plans fail, he folds the failures into his own plans for our good (Romans 8:28).

So far as we know, Paul never made it to Spain. And so with us, some of our most seemingly God-glorifying plans will not come to pass. But those crossed-out hopes, those unchecked boxes on our to-do lists, have the potential to push us deeper into our mortal creed: “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). They can bid us to say with more sincerity, “Not my plans, but yours, be done.” Best of all, they can teach us to receive God’s interruptions as better than our best-laid plans.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:1–6)

The message of this text can be opened for us to understand and embrace under three headings:

The threat, namely, the false prophets and false prophecy
The victory, namely, apostolic truth and divine power
The urgency, namely, antichrist.

Before we open each of these in turn, just a brief word about their relevance. This text is as relevant today in 2023 as it was in the first century. False prophecy abounds. Think locally and think globally. Think of the false prophets that once pastored large evangelical churches but now reject the authority of Scripture and spread their falsehoods in podcasts. Think of those who are still in large churches leading thousands astray.

Think of indigenous false prophets throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Think of the false prophecy of Islam, rejecting the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. Think of the false prophecy of Hinduism, without the divine-human Mediator. Think of false prophecies of Buddhism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism. Think of the false prophecies of Messiah-rejecting Judaism.

Think of the false prophecies of the Western secular religion of expressive individualism or moralistic therapeutic deism. Or, perhaps most similar to John’s immediate concern, think of the gnostic tendencies of modern theological liberalism that cannot accept the union of God with man in a virgin conception or walking on water or rising from the dead. It must all be demythologized to keep God at a safe distance from physical realities like sexuality and healing and crucifixion.

First John 4:1–6 is an absolutely crucial text for our time — and our school. When we say that here at Bethlehem College & Seminary we aim to build into our students the habits of mind and heart called observation, understanding, evaluation, feeling, application, and expression, we’re talking about the realities in this text. “Test the spirits” (1 John 4:1). Observe them. Do you see them? Understand them (no straw men). Evaluate them. That’s what John is focusing on. Feel their seriousness; feel the urgency; feel the glorious reality that “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Apply this to what you watch on your streaming service. Apply this to where you will spend your life so as not to waste it. Give expression to what you see so that others are protected and helped on their way to Christ, to significance, to heaven.

So, let’s turn to our three headings and see the threat, the victory, and the urgency.

The Threat

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (verse 1). Then they are described again in verse 5: “They [the false prophets] are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.”

The threat is false prophecy through false prophets — people who claim to speak God’s truth but don’t. “Many false prophets have gone out into the world” (verse 1) — many. So, my list earlier was not an exaggeration.

Now, notice that the false prophets seem to speak from two sources — one supernatural (above the world) and one natural (in the world).

“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits” (verse 1). Evil spirits never look at Christ-belittling error with indifference. Where Christ-distorting ideas are forming in your mind, demonic spirits have either put them there or are eager to get behind them and make them as plausible and prominent as possible. So, there is a supernatural source of false prophecy.

But verse 5 traces the false prophecies back to the world. “They [the false prophets] are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.” They speak from the world. Here’s a glimpse of what John has in mind by “the world”: “All that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:16). The world is a system of forces that marginalize or oppose God and substitute creature-pleasure for God-pleasure, creature-treasure for God-treasure. So, these false prophets are speaking “from the world.”

But we must not think that these two sources of falsehood — the spirits and the world — are separate and distinct. They aren’t. In 1 John 5:19, John says, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (see also Ephesians 2:2). The world shapes false prophecy because Satan shapes the world.

So, since there are so many false prophets, and since the world in which we live is shot through with Satan-shaped error, and since false prophets speak with supernatural influence, how shall we get victory over these influences so that our faith is not destroyed, and so that we stand in the truth and in love?

The Victory

We turn now from the threat to the victory — namely, apostolic truth and divine power.

Apostolic Truth

John assumes that if we recognize the false prophets as false, we will renounce their falsehood and get victory over their influence. So, the first thing he does in this text, with his apostolic authority, is give a specific doctrinal truth with which to measure the teachings of the false prophets. “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God” (1 John 4:2–3).

At first, this looks simple and straightforward. If you deny that the eternal, divine Son of God was sent by the Father into the world, becoming the God-man, the incarnate Christ — if you deny that, you are a false prophet. Your teaching cannot be trusted. As verse 3 says, you are “not from God” — that is, not born of God and not representing God.

But there’s a problem to be solved. Demons (unclean spirits) know and profess that Jesus Christ is the holy Son of God and has come in the flesh. Mark 1:23–24 states, “There was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? . . . I know who you are — the Holy One of God.’” And then ten verses later it says Jesus “would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him” (Mark 1:34).

What, then, are we to make of verse 2, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God”? I think John would answer my query like this: “When I say that a spirit confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh, I don’t mean demon-like confession. I mean confession with the whole heart and mind and soul that embraces the truth of the incarnation, trusts the truth of Christ incarnate, exults in the truth of Christ incarnate, treasures the truth of Christ incarnate, and loves the Christ himself who is incarnate.”

In fact, the literal wording of verse 2 is, “Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ come in the flesh is from God” — just as Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23), not “We preach that Christ is crucified.” It’s the same grammatical construction. As verse 3 makes plain, “Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” The confession is a heartfelt “Yes!” to the incarnate Christ. And essential to that personal, confessional embrace of Jesus as true and precious is the doctrine of the incarnation.

So, the key to victory over false prophets in verses 2 and 3 is the apostolic truth of the incarnation as a litmus test for genuine prophecy and faithful teaching. But there is one more thing to say about apostolic truth as a means of victory over the threat of false teaching. In verse 6, John says, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” In verse 4, he said, “Little children, you are from God.” And here in verse 6, he says, “We are from God.”

I think by “we” he means the same “we” as 4:14: “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” This is the “we” of eyewitnesses, just like in 1:1: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life . . .”

So, I think verse 6 is John’s way of saying, “It’s not just the apostolic doctrine of the incarnation that divides the true and false prophets. It’s the whole body of what we eyewitnesses teach.” “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us [in all we teach]; whoever is not from God does not listen to us [in all we teach]. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (verse 6). In other words, the key to victory over the spirit of error and the false prophets is apostolic teaching in general, not just one doctrine.

So, when we speak of observation and understanding and evaluation here at Bethlehem College & Seminary, this is the touchstone for evaluation. Does any claim to truth fit with apostolic teaching? Does it fit with Scripture?

What, then, is the victory over error and false prophets in this text? The first answer is apostolic truth. By this we detect the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, and are not deceived.

Divine Power

But there is a second key to victory over the false prophets — namely, divine power. This is found in verse 4: “Little children, you are from God and have overcome [gotten victory over] them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

The “them” here is the false prophets. The overcoming, or the victory, over these false prophets is the successful resistance against their deceptions, deceptions that seek to destroy our faith by destroying our hold on the truth.

And that successful resistance is owing to God’s divine power. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” The one in you is God. First John 4:12–13 says, “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” And the one who is in the world is the devil: “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). You have victory over the destructive effects of false prophets and false teaching because the Spirit of God in you is greater than the spirit of the world. He is more powerful than Satan, the great deceiver.

Our final hope at this school to be faithful over the long haul will be the power of God in our lives. The Spirit of God keeps the children of God from destructive error by causing us to observe and understand and evaluate and cherish the word of God. No hope without apostolic truth and divine power.

The Urgency

This brings us finally to the third heading, the urgency — namely, the antichrist. “Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already” (verse 3). And add to this 1 John 2:18: “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.”

John did not have to bring up the antichrist. But he does — twice (chapter 2 and chapter 4). And the effect in both cases is to intensify the urgency of not being deceived by the false prophets, because Jesus put the false prophets and the false christs together in Matthew 24:24: “False christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

So, John is saying that when there are many false prophets, especially in the church (2 Thessalonians 2:3), this is the kind of intensification of evil that precedes the coming of Christ. And that coming, he says, will be preceded at the end by the arrival of antichrist. Both 1 John 2:18 and 4:3 describe the coming of a single antichrist preceded by forerunners who are like the antichrist. First John 2:18 says, “Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” First John 4:3 says, “You heard [the spirit of antichrist] was coming and now is in the world already.”

This is virtually the same way Paul describes the coming of the end-time man of lawlessness. He is coming, and his spirit is already at work. When he finally comes, the Lord Jesus will destroy him at his second coming. Second Thessalonians 2:3, 7–8:

That day [the day of the Lord] will not come, unless the [apostasy] comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. . . . The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. . . . [When] the lawless one [is] revealed . . . the Lord Jesus will kill [him] with the breath of his mouth and bring [him] to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

Both Paul and John taught that we — between the first and second coming of Christ — are in the “last days” (2 Timothy 3:1–5; “last hour” in 1 John 2:18). In this time, the antichrist is coming, and already many antichrists have come. The man of lawlessness is coming, and already the mystery of lawlessness has come. The point of these connections, and John’s reason for mentioning the antichrist, is to make us alert but not alarmed (2 Thessalonians 2:2; Matthew 24:6; 1 John 2:28) — that is, to make us spiritually awake with a sense of urgency to the threat of false prophets, the antichrists, but not fearful, because he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.

In summary, the threat all around us, then and now, locally and globally, is false prophets who are anti-Christ. The victory over this threat is the infallible apostolic truth before us and the supreme power of God within us. And the urgency of this situation is that antichrist is coming, and his spirit is already at work. So, be of good cheer, trust Jesus, love one another (1 John 3:23), because “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

If you were to ask me to name my favorite hymn, I’d probably hem and haw, then list a bunch of favorites, and end up saying, “It depends.” I mean, how do you choose a single favorite hymn? But if you were to ask me what hymn I sing most often when I’m alone with God, that would be easy: “Be Thou My Vision.” If that makes it my favorite, so be it.

For me, it’s become a love song, kind of like the familiar phrases I default to when telling my wife how much I love her, which over time have become infused with great depths of emotional meaning. The verses of this hymn give voice to my intimate delight in and longing for the Lover of my soul. When I sing it in private, just me and my piano, it’s rare when I can sing it without tears.

Typically, when a song touches me deeply, I’m curious to know more about who wrote it and why. I guess it’s easier to take hymns somewhat for granted. I’ve loved “Be Thou My Vision” for decades, but I never thought to look up its backstory until recently.

I discovered that this hymn’s origin is veiled in the misty past of ancient Ireland. We do know that the hymn’s progenitor is a poem that’s more than a millennium old, composed in Old Gaelic and consisting of sixteen couplets. Irish tradition claims its author was a beloved sixth-century Celtic poet named St. Dallán Forgaill, but scholars have linguistic reasons to doubt this claim. All we know is that the writer certainly was a poet and sure seems to have been a saint.

Thank God for Scholars and Editors

My search wasn’t in vain, because it revealed people God used to turn that ancient poem into the precious song we have today. Thank God for Mary Byrne (1880–1931), who dragged the poem out of academic obscurity by translating the ancient Gaelic into English. And thank God for Eleanor Hull (1860–1935), who chose twelve of the sixteen couplets from Byrne’s literal translation, and then skillfully crafted them into rhymes.

And thank God for the editors of the Irish Church Hymnal, who selected ten of Hull’s couplets, combined them into five four-line verses, and then, with a stroke of inspired genius, paired those deeply moving verses with an achingly beautiful Irish folk tune they named “Slane” (in honor of St. Patrick’s famous Easter festival fire on Slane Hill, which he burned in defiance of a pagan Irish king).

The hymn was first published in the 1919 edition of that Irish hymnal, and the rest, as they say, is history. “Be Thou My Vision” soon appeared in hymnals around the world, many of which trimmed it down to the four verses most of us know and love today.

Why do so many, like me, love this hymn so much? Because it gives poetic voice to our deep love and longing for the triune God, who is the Light of our lives (John 8:12), our ever-present, indwelling Word of life (1 John 1:1), the great Treasure of our hearts (Luke 12:34), and soon the Heaven of heaven for us forever (Psalm 73:25–26).

Thy Presence My Light

If the ancient author ever titled the poem, that too has been lost to the mists of time. For centuries it was known simply as “A Prayer.” But it’s hard to imagine a better title than the poem’s first four words, “Be thou my vision,” which in Old Gaelic read, “Rop tú mo bhoile.”

Verse 1, in my view, begins just where it should: a prayer for God to enlighten the eyes of our hearts that we may be filled with his hope (Ephesians 1:18). Listen to how beautifully the lyrics convey the biblical metaphor of light as understanding:

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;Thou my best thought, by day or by night;Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Implicitly woven into this verse are the New Testament references of Jesus as “the light of the world” and “the light of life” (John 8:12). But the words also carry an echo of one of my favorite verses from the Psalms:

With you is the fountain of life;     in your light do we see light. (Psalm 36:9)

Everyone who has known deep darkness of any kind — the darkness of sin or grief or pain or depression or loneliness or spiritual oppression — and has seen, however dimly, the Light of life shining in their darkness, understands how meaningful this verse can be. It resonates with the hope that this light will not ultimately be overcome by our darkness.

Be thou my vision, O Lord, for you are the light of my life.

Thou My True Word

The prayer of verse 2 builds on the prayer of verse 1, asking that God would fill us with the riches of his wisdom and knowledge (Romans 11:33):

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true Word;I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;Thou my great Father; I Thy true son;Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Notice how simply this verse expresses the profound and mysterious New Testament teaching that requires pages to unpack in prose: that Christian wisdom comes from the Father and Son (our true Word) dwelling inside us through the Holy Spirit (John 14:23, 26), a gift we receive through our adoption as sons (Ephesians 1:5). The wisdom we’re praying for here is clearly not “a wisdom of this age,” but a wisdom that can only be “spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:6, 14).

Be thou my wisdom, O Lord, for you are the ultimate Truth.

My Treasure Thou Art

Now we come to my favorite verse of this great hymn, the one most likely to prompt tears:

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise;Thou mine inheritance, now and always;Thou and Thou only first in my heart;High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

Verse 3 is my favorite — not because the other verses are less true or less hope-giving or less precious, but because Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:34). Our treasure is whatever we love and long for most — what most satisfies, enthralls, and therefore captivates our hearts. And in this fallen age, where even our best love for our great Treasure is defective and lacking, our love is almost always accompanied by a desire to love him more perfectly, more completely. Hence, my tears, a sweet, melancholic mixture of love and longing.

So, I love this verse, the heart of the hymn, the Love Song within the love song. Because God, as the next verse will say, is the Heart of our hearts — the Treasure that makes his light beautiful, his wisdom desirable, and his heaven so heavenly.

Be thou my Treasure, O Lord, first in my heart now and always.

O Bright Heaven’s Sun

Verse 4 ends the hymn just where it should: with the great “blessed hope” of the Christian life (Titus 2:13), when “we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

High King of heaven, my victory won,May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun;Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.

If our heart is always with our treasure, and if God is our Treasure, then the Heaven of heaven will be the Heart of our heart. And the Sun of heaven will enable us to see more light than we’ve ever seen, “for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). And so it will be, always and forever. To which we say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).

What a priceless gift, this hymn. Thank you, Lord, for that ancient Celtic poet whose God-entranced heart overflowed so eloquently through his quill. And thank you for those throughout history whose collective labors have made this great song of love and longing available to us. And thank you for the gifted Celtic folk musicians whose sweet, haunting melody makes it so wonderful to sing.

But most of all, thank you, Lord, for being the Light of our lives, our ever-present, indwelling Word of life, the great Treasure of our hearts, and someday the Heaven of heaven.

Yes, O Lord, be thou our vision, now in this darkened age, and soon — may it be soon! — in unveiled, eternal glory with unclouded eyes.

What would you give to attend a conference where bygone giants of the faith — men like Richard Baxter, Charles Bridges, and Charles Spurgeon — spoke about pastoral ministry? The tickets would sell out in just seconds.

We love to consider the coming day when we will meet our favorite long-departed preachers around the throne of the Lamb. But until then, we already enjoy access to their wisdom through the body of writings they have left us. We can trust such faithful men to guide us through the voyage of pastoral ministry, for they never cease to point us to Scripture as they offer precious insights from the past. The classics are classic for a reason.

I am grateful for the wealth of resources that God has provided to aid ministers and theological students in their spiritual growth. During my lifetime, I have read almost every major classic Reformed book on pastoral ministry. If, however, I were to choose only ten books on pastoral theology to have in my library, I would pick the ten listed below.

In this list, I have reluctantly bypassed several excellent books on preaching because I wish to emphasize those works that treat pastoral ministry in general. May the Lord bless you, dear brothers, as you walk with these pastors of days past and lean on them to counsel you in “the old paths” (Jeremiah 6:16 KJV).

1. The Christian Ministry by Charles Bridges

The Christian Ministry is my all-time favorite treatise on pastoral ministry. In this exceptional work, Charles Bridges (1794–1869) provides a comprehensive survey of poimenics (pastoral theology) deeply steeped in scriptural faithfulness, conveying a tender fear of God flowing out of personal experience.

In this work, Bridges considers the nature of the ministry, the calling to and the qualifications for ministry, and the difficulties involved. Of particular importance is his treatment of causes for the lack of success in the ministry. He closes with a thorough outline of the minister’s pastoral and preaching labors. This work is outstanding in its biblical faithfulness, experiential warmth, and searching application. He also has an invaluable (and quite rare!) section on experiential (“experimental”) and discriminatory preaching.

No minister of the gospel should bypass this book, for it will immensely aid and enlighten him in both his personal life and his public ministry. I cannot recommend this book highly enough; I would urge you to purchase and read it before any other book on this list.

2. Lectures to My Students by Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon’s (1834–1892) piety, love for Christ, insights into human nature, intense spirituality, realism, healthy sense of humor, and practical wisdom saturate every lecture in this priceless anthology. For Spurgeon, faithful preaching and pastoral ministry are simply the overflow of vibrant piety and heartfelt spirituality. Spurgeon was an experiential pastor who emphasized the union of head, heart, and hands in the Christian life and stressed vitality over method in pastoral ministry. Here, he deals with some unique topics, like posture and gestures in preaching. Some of his comments are very entertaining, but each is laced with remarkable wisdom. He is weighty and thorough, as always.

Above all, read his lectures on “The Minister’s Self-Watch,” “The Preacher’s Private Prayer,” “The Minister’s Fainting Fits,” “The Minister’s Ordinary Conversation,” “The Holy Spirit in Connection with Our Ministry,” and “The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear.” Every theological student and minister — both young and old — would benefit from reading and rereading these.

While I’m writing about Spurgeon, can I cheat a bit by making this a double selection? If so, I would encourage you to read his All-Round Ministry as well. It is packed with Spurgeonic wisdom (and sprinkled with humor), well-suited even for seasoned pastors.

3. The Christian Pastor’s Manual by John Brown

This collection of pastoral insights from John Brown (1784–1858) is the best compilation I have read on practical pastoral ministry. It features contributions from ministers such as Philip Doddridge, Abraham Booth, Isaac Watts, John Newton, and Thomas Scott. These authors investigate the character, calling, duties, difficulties, and dangers of the Christian minister.

My favorite part of the volume is John Jennings’s chapter on discriminatory and experiential preaching titled “Particular and Experimental Preaching” — a piece that ably reflects the Puritan homiletical tradition. For self-examination, young ministers can profitably peruse Isaac Watts’s “Questions Proper for Young Ministers Frequently to Put to Themselves.” This compilation offers particularly edifying reading for frequently overlooked aspects of pastoral ministry.

4. Pastoral Theology by Albert N. Martin

This magisterial three-volume set emerged from lectures that Albert Martin (1934–) delivered in the late twentieth century (1978–1998) at Trinity Ministerial Academy in New Jersey. After Pastor Martin retired and moved to Michigan, I had the privilege of encouraging him to adapt his recorded lectures into a volume on practical theology. He did even better than I hoped! After having his messages transcribed, he revised them with painstaking detail; then he flew out to New Jersey to deliver his revised and improved lectures for the final time — the sum of which filled three hefty volumes instead of one.

One need not agree with every detail of Martin’s advice to appreciate his seasoned pastoral wisdom. His seven axioms in the first volume are perhaps the best work ever done on the foundations of pastoral ministry. His work in all three volumes is engaging, practical, and comprehensive. In my view, this set is the best twenty-first-century survey of pastoral theology from a practical and historical-theological perspective. With relevance and application to contemporary life and ministry, Martin brilliantly draws from the full range of Reformation-era and Puritan theology on the pastorate. This set will become one of the most definitive pastoral theologies in the Reformed world for many years to come.

5. Lectures in Pastoral Theology by Robert James George

This three-volume set from the pen of Reformed Presbyterian minister Robert James George (1844–1911) is overshadowed perhaps only by Albert Martin’s Pastoral Theology. This work is ideal for those looking for an older, thorough pastoral theology that provides wisdom for every area of ministry. Here, George emphasizes the character, calling, and duties of ministers. He focuses as well on piety, especially in his chapter titled “Personal Acquaintance with God.” In my opinion, this is the best comprehensive work on pastoral theology written in the twentieth century.

6. Hints and Helps in Pastoral Theology by William S. Plumer

Everything of Presbyterian pastor and scholar William S. Plumer (1802–1880) is worth its weight in gold, and this book is no exception. It may not be as thorough as one could wish, but his hints and helps are invaluable to the minister. Plumer discusses topics like piety, ministerial character, evangelism, pastoral duties, assessing one’s call to missions, and what he calls the “matter” and the “manner” of preaching. This book is an excellent read.

7. Pastoral Theology by Thomas Murphy

With comprehensive scope, Thomas Murphy (1823–1900) — the erstwhile pastor of Frankford Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia — analyzes the nature, history, sources, and necessity of poimenics as a discipline. He covers the life of the pastor in the closet, study, and pulpit, as well as in shepherding, leadership, and church ministries. He also stresses the importance of piety, and provides practical directions for cultivating it through the means of grace.

8. The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter

Taking Acts 20:28 as his point of departure, Richard Baxter’s (1615–1691) work is heart-stirring, convicting, and enlightening. He sharply rebukes lukewarmness in the ministry, declaring that “a sleepy preacher will hardly awaken drowsy sinners” and exhorting the pastor to preach “as a dying man to dying men.”

The Reformed Pastor is full of memorable phrases. The last third of the book is an exhortation with practical directions for personally catechizing the congregation in pastoral visits. Above all, Baxter demonstrates that faithful care for the flock begins with the pastor’s consistent walk before God. This work is not only Richard Baxter at his best; it is Puritan poimenics at its best as well.

9. Homiletics and Pastoral Theology by William G.T. Shedd

William G.T. Shedd’s (1820–1894) volume on homiletics and pastoral theology is a historical standard and has been widely used for scores of years. In his discourses on homiletics, Shedd treats matters as varied as style, sermon choice and planning, and extemporaneous preaching. Most importantly, he considers the spiritual, intellectual, and social character of the minister. This is a basic but trustworthy guide to poimenics.

10. Pastoral Theology by Patrick Fairbairn

In my younger years, I read Patrick Fairbairn’s (1805–1874) rather dense tome with great profit. Here, he considers the nature of pastoral ministry, the call to the ministry, the life of the pastor, and the duties of the pastor, such as catechesis and visitation. Find here a timeless work from the height of nineteenth-century Scottish evangelicalism.

Take Up and Read!

Someone might peruse this list and exclaim, “What pastor has time to read ten books on pastoral theology?” As a busy pastor, seminary professor, and conference speaker, I certainly understand time limitations. So, allow me to make a suggestion: Start with just one book for this year — the first one on this list that you haven’t yet read. And then consider making it a goal to read at least one book a year on pastoral theology (aside from your other reading). If God preserves you, you really could read dozens of volumes over the course of a lifetime of ministry.

If God has called us to serve him as a minister of the gospel, we have a responsibility to develop our knowledge and gifts to be the best pastors we can be. Books give us access to the thoughts of some of the best pastors who have ever lived. Let’s take advantage of the wisdom they found in the word of God in their many trials and temptations. Take up and read!

Audio Transcript

We’re past Christmas and quickly marching toward the new year of 2024, and a new year means a new Bible-reading plan for many of us. Two Mondays ago, we were encouraged to make Bible reading a part of our everyday routine. We looked at that in episode 2003. But obviously, as we embark on our reading plan, the goal isn’t to check off a box each day. I think we all know this. Even in the grammar of the New Testament, in its five hundred “therefores,” we see that the Bible “intends to have a practical, emotional, intellectual, behavioral effect on our lives today.” That was two weeks ago, in episode 2002.

Bible reading is about engaging with God’s precious word in a profound, heart-stirring, life-changing way. And this poses a challenge in our Bible reading, because as we get into our daily rhythm, over the course of time we find — even as we read about the most precious things in the universe — that we feel nothing. Our hearts grow dull. Our spiritual affections grow flat. So how do we break out of this dull rut and jump-start our heart’s engagement with God’s word?

Many have asked that exact question, including one anonymous listener who writes this: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. My question is, What if I read my Bible, but I don’t feel anything in my affections that resonates with the worth, the value, the preciousness, the beauty, the pleasures of what those words are supposed to communicate to my soul? Is there anything I can do next, or do I just have to wait until the experience sort of just happens to me at some point in the future?”

Well, I am so glad for the question because it is something that I’ve been thinking about recently so much as I’ve been meditating on a section of the book of Proverbs. I think this section of the book of Proverbs is introduced by the inspired writer precisely to answer that question. The section is Proverbs 22:17–24:22. Push pause if you want to go and get your Bible because I’m going to get everything I have to say from about three lines in Proverbs 22:17–18.

Okay, now you’ve got your Bible, and the section runs from Proverbs 22:17 to Proverbs 24:22. If you look at the end of Proverbs 22:20, it says, “Have I not written for you thirty sayings?” Now, those thirty sayings are found in Proverbs 22:17–24:22 in groupings. Some Bibles break up the groupings for you. Every time a new theme starts, there’s a new saying, and there are thirty of them in the unit.

“This text is God’s word to you: Apply your heart.”

Verse 17 is where the sayings start, and it says, “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise.” So, these sayings are usually entitled the “Words of the Wise.” What’s so important about this is that I think the first two verses, or the first three verses perhaps, in this new section of thirty sayings are written precisely to answer the question that we’ve just been given — namely, how do you hear and how do you feel these words appropriately?

Inspired Answer

So, let me read verses 17 and 18: “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them [these words of the wise, communicating that knowledge] within you, if all of them are ready on your lips.” So, two things.

The first line says, “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise.” Clearly the point there is this: words are being spoken, and you should lean in — literally “incline your ear.” What do we do when we can’t hear? We kind of lean in. We press in closer.

We do that with our attention as well. If you’re reading words or if you’re hearing words, and the words are just going by, he’s saying, “Don’t let them go by. Don’t let any of the words go by. Attend meticulously, carefully, attentively to the words themselves, because the words” — next line — “are going to form knowledge in your mind.” The next line says this: “and apply your heart to my knowledge.”

Knowledge is what forms in the mind. It’s some idea, some communication of something valuable or precious or important or wise that he’s going to give you through the medium of words that hit your ear, go inside, and produce knowledge. And then — here it comes — he says to “apply your heart to my knowledge.” The effect? “It will be pleasant.” I take it that the heart is the organ of pleasantness, pleasure.

And that’s what the question is: How can I experience pleasure — an appropriate admiring and valuing and treasuring and loving and embracing and enjoyment and satisfaction — in what I’m perceiving through the words? And he says, “The way you do it is to apply your heart.”

Now, I’m going to talk for just a minute or two about what that means, but just know that this writer, this inspired writer, is answering your question. Is there something you can do to move from ears attending to words and minds grasping for knowledge to hearts experiencing pleasantness of what is within? Is there anything you can do? His answer is yes, and the words he uses go like this: “Apply your heart to what your ear has heard and the knowledge that’s forming in your mind.”

How to Push on the Heart

Now, what does that mean? I’ve got here, right in front of me on my screen, the word tā·šîṯ, which is Hebrew for the verb apply. The full phrase means “your heart apply,” or literally, “your heart put” or “set” or “stand” or “place.”

So you take your heart, and you put it, you place it, into what you’ve seen with your eyes or heard with your ears. You push the nose of your heart into the beauty of the knowledge. If the heart is not feeling anything, you say to your heart, “Heart, wake up.” And you take hold of the heart, and you apply it; you push it; you place it in the knowledge. You push on it. There is something you can do.

Here’s an analogy. Suppose you would like to taste a steak. You can hear it sizzling on the grill outside, so you go outside. Then your eyes see the steak sizzling on the grill. If you get close enough, your nose may smell the steak sizzling on the grill — but there’s still no taste in your mouth of that steak. Is there anything you can do?

That is the question. It really is the question. Is there anything you can do with the steak of God, with the steak of Christ, with the steak of salvation, with the steak of the word of God, the word of the infinite Creator God? Is there anything you can do to taste it? You know what the answer is. You take a knife, and you cut off a piece, and you put it in your mouth, and you chew and you chew. And then you swallow, and you taste. And you say to your heart, “Eat, heart. Eat, heart.”

Diamonds Hide in Plain Sight

Let me give some more examples. I’m walking to church. It’s October. The leaves on the trees in my neighborhood are unbelievably bright with yellow and orange, and the sun is shining. It has been a more mild October than usual, so it’s sixty degrees. The leaves are flickering, and it is absolutely stunning.

“Don’t say that you are beyond the capacity to feel the beauty of the knowledge of God in the Bible.”

But I’m walking to church, to a prayer meeting, and not noticing anything. My eyes are seeing it, and I’m not seeing it. What has to happen? I pause. God’s grace causes me to pause. This little podcast right here causes me to pause. And you look at it — you really look at it. You lean in, and you say, “Heart, that’s orange. That’s yellow. They were green, and now they’re orange and yellow and gold, and the sun is making them bright, and they are waving at you with the breeze, and God is trying to get your attention and to say, ‘The glory of God is shining here. Look hard.’” And you push the nose of the heart up into the tree.

When I came home, several days ago, there were two or three afternoons that were so stunning that I would look out my window and say, “Whoa.” And I’d get up and go downstairs, and I’d walk under the tree and look up. Then I walked across the street and looked back. Then I got out my camera and tried to get some different shots. Then I walked around the side of the house to see what it looked like from that angle. This is the pushing of the heart into the gold of natural revelation.

You do the same thing with the word of God. A diamond is offered to you. You see the diamond, but you don’t see the diamond. So you say to your heart, “Heart, move around this diamond. Look at the diamond from that side, and look at the diamond from that side.”

Heart-Talk as God-Talk

And when a born-again person is reading Proverbs 22:17 — “Apply your heart to this knowledge. Apply your heart. Apply your heart” — you can’t help but turn it into prayer. When you’re preaching to your heart, and you’re saying to your heart, “Come on, heart; wake up. Come on, heart; look at this. Come on, heart; feel this. This is beautiful. Wake up, heart,” instinctively you are praying. You’re not just talking to your heart — though you are talking to your heart, because that’s what the text says to do: “Apply your heart.” But you are also praying, “God, God, help me. God, open my eyes.”

So, may I suggest that even if you listen to this right now and say, “I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work,” or, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about” — may I urge you? May I plead with you? You may be such a novice at this that you need practice. Please don’t give up. Don’t say that you are beyond the capacity to feel the beauty of the knowledge of God in the Bible and the knowledge of his ways. This text is God’s word to you: “Apply your heart.”

A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lind-or-burúmë, Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin. “Excuse me: that is a part of my name for it; I do not know what the word is in the outside languages: you know, the thing we are on, where I stand and look out on fine mornings, and think about the sun, and the grass beyond the wood, and the horses, and the clouds, and the unfolding of the world. . . . Did you say what you call it?” . . .

“Hill?” suggested Pippin.

Treebeard repeated the word thoughtfully. “Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 465–466).

Names are powerful realities. But one thing names do is abridge. They shrink down. In haste, they label realities larger and deeper than themselves — things too wild to be caged by consonants and vowels.

Do you ever linger over what others label and discard? This world needs more Treebeards, repeating words thoughtfully in their minds, “Hill” (or “grace” or “wife”), concluding that these are hasty words for things that have stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped. Do you ever ache to pass the title to explore reality’s pages, to bring down with every pass what Coleridge once called the “veil of familiarity”?

Making the Familiar Unfamiliar

Our modern world seems comfortable with dull familiarities and hollow names. As its idols, it has eyes but does not see, ears that cannot hear creation declaring God’s glory. Oh, that? That is just a hill, an ocean, a mailman. Oh, that? That is a church, a pastor, a religious ritual called “communion.” Two-dimensional words thrown at realities that shall outlive the sun. Its metallic voice denies this world is enchanted, laughs to think that God’s eternity presses down upon us.

Against this veil, beautiful writing is a battering ram. Shelley put it this way:

Poetry [and poetic language] lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world; it makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar. . . . It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. (Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry)

The most imaginative Christian preachers and writers employ their lyrical hearts and prophetic powers to stir and awaken us to war with the hasty and bland word as an act of resistance against seeing this life as a hasty and bland reality. They stare. And stare. And see. And say, hill: “Earth pregnant with history.” “A pimple on the ground’s face.”

Then they delete. Reread Scripture. Stare again, and say, hill: “A place pagans climbed to reach their gods.” “A place once crowned with Jerusalem, God’s own city.”

When you ask and seek and knock for new doors into what is, you employ what John Piper calls “poetic effort.” But we dare not stop at the name. Poetic effort moves beyond the initial way of saying it, to soar higher, swim deeper, alight upon that “sweetness of speech [that] increases persuasiveness” (Proverbs 16:21). It is a hunt, an expedition, an obsession for words fitly spoken — apples of gold in settings of silver (Proverbs 25:11). It is salty speech, an apt answer, a poem, a parable, a labored and lovely sentence. It is a turn of phrase that we hope the Spirit uses to turn the reader’s heart from sin to the Son.

It is to bend the bowstring back, straining to send the arrow farther, deeper. Poetic effort is lexical sweat, keyboard calisthenics, the reworking of a sentence and paragraph again and again, arranging and rearranging twenty-six little letters that form little words that grow into little sentences and little pages and little books, each reaching, straining to grasp even the hem of his garment. Poetic effort.

Man’s First Words

Let’s travel back to behold the first time a man pushed past a name to describe more beautifully (and thus, more fully) the enchantments he felt and saw.

Gazing upon Eve, Adam’s heart vented beautifully:

This at last is bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman,because she was taken out of Man. (Genesis 2:23)

Don’t overlook the significance: From the very beginning, music stirred within man. The first time we hear the voice of man in the pages of Scripture, it’s lyrical. Let us finally put to death the Neanderthal man grunting monosyllables beside his fire — when the first man’s heart overflows with wonder and gratitude, it cascades forth as poetry. When Adam sees Eve, he doesn’t go and measure her height and weight. He doesn’t stop at a name. He serenades her.

He exclaims,

This at last is bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh . . .

At last. This marks the closest thing to exasperation unfallen man can achieve in paradise. Adam’s journey to Eve was meandering.

God appraised, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” and he promised, “I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). Creature after creature, God brings before Adam for inspection. Imagine Adam staring at the duck — and the duck staring back. The duck did not fit the bill (neither would the rhinoceros, the eagle, or the lion). Did his heart begin to sicken from hope deferred? He names them and sends them away.

Exhausted, Adam falls into a strange night. God wakes him to a dream, the fulfillment of the promise. Who is this, fairer than moonlight, sweeter than Eden’s fruit? Her eyes, caves unexplored. Her cheeks, new meadows. Her voice, soon to be his favorite song.

This at last is bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh.

She is him, but not him. His bones, his rib — enfleshed, reshaped, beautified.

Oh, she shall be called Woman,because she was taken out of Man.

He from dust; she from him. He staggers beneath God’s kindness. His wife, his helper, taken from him to fit with him on mission. Eve, the mother of all living, his wonder in paradise.

Eyes of the Poetic Life

The first words out of man’s mouth in Scripture form a poem. Man is poetic because his God, in whose image he is sculpted, is the Highest Poet. God is the Great Lover of beauty, and the Great Beauty Triune.

Expressive Adam, we may not necessarily say, practiced poetic effort — he seems to simply wake to sing his final draft without the thorns and thistles we encounter in our own composition. What he seemed to do seamlessly, we say and write with first drafts, deletions, edits, scouring for that word, that phrase, that image, that captures the naked reality God sets before us. A reality seen and marveled at by all who know and love the truth.

But let me further clarify. What I invite you to is not simply to add some color to your preaching or prose or evangelism — more metaphor and more creativity to your writing. I invite you deeper into the poetic life, to reclaim that due wonder at the world and her God.

This is often what we love most about those enchanted Christian writers, isn’t it? We don’t return to them so much for their pens, as for their eyes — eyes that saw the unseen, beheld God and his glory draped over all the world. The poetic life, the Godward life, is not just for artsy types who like that sort of thing, but for those who know they live in the concluding chapter of the best tale that could be told.

When Names Fall Away

Dumb idols cannot enrapture like our God. Even out of Eden, his cursed world still boasts of vivid blues and deep reds, still grows mangos and whispers sunsets. Our God upholds the galaxies with a word and then bends down to paint the cardinal red.

And we know that this is all but a stage to unfold the story where God’s Beloved Son spoke the galaxies into existence by a word and then bent down to paint a cross red. Hill, that is a hasty name for Queen Golgotha as she stooped low to enthrone her Creator. And at the end of this story (and in another sense at its beginning), the higher husband, the New Adam who slept a darker sleep and woke to a better dream, will sing with higher significance to his perfected Eve:

This at last is bone of my bonesAnd flesh of my flesh;She shall be called the church,Because she was taken out of the Son of Man.

We refuse to stop at names until names flee into irrelevance when we see him face to face.

In our first session, we dealt with the heart of pastoral ministry: working from joy for the joy of our people. Then in the second, we reflected on the two main tasks of pastor-elders: teaching and governing. Now, in this final session, I was asked to address two specific practical issues.

At first glance, “husband of one wife” and “not quarrelsome” might seem like a random pairing, but interestingly enough at least two threads hold them together. First, both are particularly countercultural today (one has been for a while; the other, all of a sudden). Also (and this was surprising to me), both were live issues in Ephesus in the first century, when Paul gave the list of qualifications in 1 Timothy 3. Warnings against quarrelsomeness and disordered relationships between men and women is the focus of chapter 2, which leads into the elder qualifications in chapter 3.

First, Paul addresses the men in 2:8, “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” Two quintessential dangers for men: anger and quarreling. May it not be so in the church. Then he turns to women in verses 9–15. Admittedly, the issues here are modest dress and proper submissiveness in the assembly, but we have here male-female, man-woman issues, which are related to (though not the same as) “husband of one wife.”

‘Husband of One Wife’

The qualification is literally “one-woman man” (miās gunaikos andra).

In 2015, Desiring God surveyed eight thousand of its users. The study found that ongoing pornography use was not only dreadfully common but increasingly higher among younger adults.

More than 15 percent of Christian men over age sixty admitted to ongoing use.
It was more than 20 percent for men in their fifties, 25 percent for men in their forties, and 30 percent for men in their thirties.
But nearly 50 percent of self-professing Christian men ages eighteen to twenty-nine acknowledged ongoing use of porn.

(The survey found a similar trend among women, but in lesser proportions: 10 percent of females ages eighteen to twenty-nine; 5 percent in their thirties; increasingly less for forties, fifties, and sixty-plus.)

Today the “one-woman man” may seem like an endangered species in some circles. In our oversexualized and sexually confused society, it may seem increasingly rare to come across married men who are truly faithful to their bride — in body, heart, and mind. It may seem even more rare to find unmarried men who are on the trajectory for that kind of fidelity to a future wife.

Of the fifteen basic qualifications for the office of elder in the local church, one-woman man may be the one that runs most against the grain of our society. We’re relentlessly pushed in precisely the opposite direction. Television, movies, advertising, social media, locker-room talk, and even casual conversations condition the twenty-first-century man to approach women as a consumer of many instead of the husband of one. The cultural icons teach our men to selfishly compromise and take rather than to carefully cultivate and guard fidelity to one woman.

But what’s rare in society is still easier to find, thank God, in biblically faithful churches. The true gospel is genuinely powerful and changes lives, even under such intense pressure from a world like ours. You can be pure. You can retrain your plastic brain. You can walk a different path by the power of God’s Spirit, even if that other path was once yours. In the company of others who enjoy pleasures far deeper than promiscuity, you can become the one-woman man our world needs.

For All Christians

Just because being a “one-woman man” is essential for church leaders does not mean it’s irrelevant for every Christian. The elder qualifications, as Don Carson says, are remarkable for being unremarkable. What’s demanded of church officers is not academic decoration, world-class intellect, and talents above the common man. Rather, the elders, as we’ve seen, are to be examples of normal, healthy, mature Christianity (1 Peter 5:3). The elder qualifications are flashpoints of the Christian maturity to which every believer should aspire and that every Christian, with God’s help, can attain in real measure.

God does not mean for us to relegate one-woman manhood to formal leaders. This is the glorious, serious, joy-filled calling of every follower of Christ. It’s a word for every Christian man (and every Christian woman to be a “one-man woman,” 1 Timothy 5:9). And it’s relevant for married and unmarried alike.

For Husbands and Bachelors

Clearly, “one-woman man” applies to married men. In faithfulness to the marriage covenant, the married man is to be utterly committed in mind, heart, and body to his one wife. Being a one-woman man has implications for where we go, whom we are with, how we interact with other women, what we do with our eyes, where we let our thoughts run, what we access on our computers and smartphones, how we use direct messaging, and what we watch on screen.

It’s also relevant for married men in the positive sense, not just the negative. A married Christian must not be a “zero-woman man,” living as though he isn’t married, neglecting to care adequately for his wife and family. If you’re married, faithfulness to the covenant requires your interests being divided (1 Corinthians 7:35), but only with your one woman.

Do you have to be married to be a one-woman man? The challenge to be a one-woman man applies not only to married men but to the unmarried as well. Are you a flirt? Do you move flippantly from one dating relationship to another? Do you enjoy the thrill of connecting emotionally with new women without moving with intentionality toward clarity about marriage?

Long before they marry, bachelors are setting (and revealing) their trajectory of fidelity. In every season of life and every relationship, however serious, they are preparing themselves to be one-woman men, or not, by how they engage with and treat the women in their lives.

Isn’t It ‘Husband of One Wife’?

At this point, you may be feeling the weight of this phrase “one-woman man” both for elder qualification and for Christian manhood in general. Don’t our English translations read “husband of one wife” in 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:6? That seems like a clearer box to check. It’s either true or it’s not — you’re either married to one woman or more — without any of these questions about whether your eyes and mind might be wandering unfaithfully or if your connections are shady. And nothing that might apply to the unmarried.

In a previous generation, this may have been the most debated of the elder qualifications. Some take it to require that church leaders be married; others say it bars divorced men who have remarried; others claim it was designed specifically to rule out polygamy. But one problem, among others, with each of those interpretations is that they make the qualification digital — that is, plainly true or false — rather than analog, like every one of the other fourteen qualifications.

The traits for leadership in the local church are brilliantly designed to prompt the plurality of elders, and the congregation, to make a collective decision about a man’s readiness for church office. Sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable — these are analog and unavoidably subjective categories (not easy either-or questions) that require careful thought and evaluation.

I believe Paul intended us to read “one-woman man” as requiring the same spirit of discernment, not as a black-and-white, no-exceptions rule. Rather: Is this man today, so far as we know, through years of tested faithfulness, faithful to his one wife? Is he above reproach in the way he relates to women? Is he manifestly a one-woman man?

Ask Yourself

Brothers, ask yourself these questions, and be ruthlessly honest: Am I a one-woman man? What, if anything, in my life would call this into question? What habits, what relationships, what patterns do I need to bring into the light with trusted brothers, and ask God afresh to make me truly, deeply, gloriously, increasingly a one-woman man?

At the level of the public qualification, if you’re married, what is your reputation? Do people think of you — your speech, your conduct, your body language — as joyfully and ruthlessly faithful to your wife? Or might there be some question? Are you known for demonstrating self-control publicly and privately for the sake of the purity and fidelity of your marriage?

For the unmarried, what do your friendships and relationships look like with the opposite sex? Do you genuinely treat women “as sisters, in all purity” (1 Timothy 5:2)? Are you dabbling with pornography, trying to stop, but still allowing room for it? Or have you become tragically desensitized to impurity because of the boundaries being crossed on your screens? In your thought life, on the Internet, in your interactions, are you a one-woman man waiting for your one woman?

In Christ, we need not be satisfied with anything less. Try as hard as you can, you will not be satisfied. But in Christ, we are called to be one-woman men in a world that expects and encourages far less. And in Christ, you have the resources you need to see that fidelity become reality. This is what God expects and makes possible in the church and requires in its leaders.

And to end this section with a practical exhortation: Brothers, you are not a victim of your own heart. Seize it. Direct it. Renounce disordered desires. Resolve to cultivate new ones. How you handle your heart in individual moments forms a pattern that profoundly forms and shapes your plastic brain and desires. Do not pretend to adjust the fixed, objective world to your subjective, disordered desires.

Rather, take hold of your heart and tell it, “Heart, feel according to reality. Be shaped by truth. Learn to feel how you should feel about reality.” This is what wedding rings are for. They are fixed, objective, solid, near, on your very hand, to remind you of objective reality. You made an exclusive covenant. You vowed to her before God and your witnesses. Now, renounce sin, embrace righteousness, and grow your heart to flourishing within the life-giving tracks of the covenant.

Satan thrills to have you follow your sinful heart, whether you celebrate it full-on, like the world does, or whether you back into it by thinking there’s nothing you can do about it. Seize it in moments to form habits that mightily reform and reshape your heart over time. We tend to overestimate what we can do in the moment (and then get discouraged and give up), while we tend to underestimate what we can do, with God’s help, in the long run.

And all that happens within the matrix of God’s ongoing grace: his word, prayer for help, and accountability from brothers and your wife. This is not mere willpower, because God gave us his word and his Spirit. Word in hand, as your God-provided tool, and Spirit in you, go to work and conform your heart to reality.

‘Not Quarrelsome’

This brings us to “not quarrelsome.” Or, as the four-hundred-year-old King James Version (KJV) translates it with surprising timelessness, “not a brawler.” The best of the KJV qualifications are in verse 3: “Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler.” (And verse 7: “He must have a good report of them which are without.”)

Of the full list of fifteen, “not a brawler” is one of just four negative traits. Modern translations say “not quarrelsome” (ESV and NIV) or “not pugnacious” (NASB), but the language of the KJV has endured. We still know what a brawler is, and it doesn’t take much foresight to recognize what a problem it would be to have one as a pastor — or, God forbid, a whole team of brawlers.

However, a nuance that “not a brawler” may lack is the distinction between the physical and verbal dimensions of combat. This is the upside of the term “not quarrelsome.” In 1 Timothy 3, the physical (if there were any question) has been covered already: “not violent but gentle” (“no striker,” KJV). What’s left is the temperamental, and especially the verbal.

We all know by the war within us how the flesh of man finds itself at odds with the Spirit of God. By nature, we are prone to quarrel when we should make peace, and not to ruffle feathers when we should speak up. And in a day in which so many are prone to sharpness online and cowardice face-to-face, we need leaders who are “not quarrelsome” and at the same time have the courage to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). We need men who “contend for the faith” (Jude 3) without being contentious. We need pastors who are not brawlers — and yet know when (and how) to say the needful hard word.

We need men who know how to disagree without creating unnecessary division. We need pastors and elders with sober minds and enough self-control to avoid needless controversies, and with enough conviction and courage to move gently and steadily toward conflicts that await wise, patient leadership.

Men Who Make Peace

The flip side of the negative “not quarrelsome” would be the positive peaceable. Titus 3:2 is the only other New Testament use of the word we translate “not quarrelsome” (amachon): “Remind [Christians] . . . to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:1–2).

James 3, which warns, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (verse 1), also directs us to “the wisdom from above,” which is bookended by peace:

The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. (verses 17–18)

Healthy pastors are peacemakers at heart, not pugilists. Like Mufasa: “I’m only brave when I have to be. Simba, being brave doesn’t mean you go looking for trouble.” They don’t fight for sport; they fight to secure and defend true peace. They are not wolf hunters but competent defenders of the flock.

They know first and foremost — as Christ’s representatives to their people — that our God is “the God of peace” (Romans 15:33); our message, “the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15). Our Lord Jesus himself made peace (Ephesians 2:15; Colossians 1:20) and “is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), preaching “peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (Ephesians 2:17). Christian leaders want real peace — enough not to avoid the necessary conflict that may be required to secure real peace.

But making peace is not unique to Christian leaders. Rather, we insist on it in our leaders so that they model and encourage peacemaking for the whole church. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” said our Lord, “for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). “Let us pursue what makes for peace” (Romans 14:19). “Strive for peace with everyone” (Hebrews 12:14). “If possible, so far as it depends on you” — all of you who are members of the body of Christ — “live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).

This kind of peacemaking means not only leading our flocks in preserving and enjoying peace but also in making the peace that first requires confrontation. Some controversies cannot be avoided, and we engage not because we simply want to fight and win, but because we want to win those being deceived, and protect the flock from their deception. God means for leaders in his church to have the kind of spiritual magnanimity to rise above the allure of petty disputes, and to press valiantly for peace and Christ-exalting harmony in places angels might fear to tread.

What Brawlers Fail to Do

Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus are particularly helpful in this regard, as the veteran apostle gives his counsel to younger leaders in the thick of church conflict.

Perhaps no single passage is more perceptive for leaders in times of conflict than 2 Timothy 2:24–26. More than any other, this charge expands what it means for pastors to be peaceable and “not quarrelsome.” Alongside 1 Peter 5:1–5, I would put this text as one of the most important words in all the Bible for church leaders:

The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

Paul fleshes out the negative “not quarrelsome” with four great positive charges.

First is “kind to everyone.” The presence of conflict does not excuse a lack of kindness. How pastors carry themselves in conflict is as important as engaging the right battles. And the Lord calls his servants not to be kind just to the sheep while treating potential wolves like trash, but to be “kind to everyone” — both to the faithful and to those who at present seem to be opponents.

Then comes “able to teach,” which, as we’ve seen, includes both ability and inclination (1 Timothy 3:2) and is the main trait that distinguishes pastor-elders (1 Timothy 3:1–7) from deacons (1 Timothy 3:8–13). In the previous verse (2 Timothy 2:23), Paul refers to “foolish, ignorant [apaideutos] controversies” — literally, “untaught” or “uneducated.”

How many conflicts in the church begin in, or are fueled by, honest ignorance, and need pastors to come in with kindness (not with guns blazing) to provide sober-minded clarity and instruction from God’s word? The people need patient teaching on the topic. Pastors, as we’ve seen, are fundamentally teachers, and Christ, the great Teacher, doesn’t mean for his undershepherds to put aside their primary calling when conflict arises. Conflict is the time when humble, careful, Bible-saturated teaching can be needed most.

Next is “patiently enduring evil.” Rarely do serious conflicts resolve as quickly as we would like. And whether some genuine evil is afoot or just an honest difference of opinion, good pastors lead the way in patience. That doesn’t mean resigning themselves to inaction, or letting conflict carry on needlessly without attention and modest next steps, but patiently walking the path of a process — not standing still and not bull-rushing the issue, but faithfully and patiently approaching the conflict one step at a time. The pastors should be the most patient and least passive men in the church — and therefore the most able to deal with conflict and make genuine peace.

The fourth and final charge from 2 Timothy 2 is “correcting his opponents with gentleness” (verse 25). In commending kindness, teaching, and patience, Paul doesn’t leave aside correction. God calls pastors to rightly handle his word (2 Timothy 2:15), which is profitable not only for teaching but for correction (2 Timothy 3:16). The goal is, first, protection of the flock from error, and then restoration of those in error “in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1).

The pastor’s heart for peace, not mere polemics, comes out in the kind of soul that endures in needful conflict: we pray that “God may perhaps grant them repentance” (2 Timothy 2:25). We long for restoration, not revenge (Romans 12:19). We pray first for repentance, not retribution.

And we remember that the real war is not against flesh and blood — especially within the household of faith. There is a cosmic war that far outstrips any culture war. Our final enemy is Satan, not our human “opponents.” We want them to come to repentance — to “come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil” (2 Timothy 2:26) — through kindness, humble teaching, patience, and gentle correction — remembering that “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). We do not first want to be rid of our opponents but to win them back from Satan’s sway.

Hardest on Themselves

How, then, do pastors pick their battles? What foolish controversies do they wisely avoid, and what conflicts require their courage to address kindly, patiently, and gently with humble teaching?

First, as we have noted again and again today, pastors do not work solo in the New Testament. Christ not only put teachers in charge of his churches, but a plurality of teachers. And he intends for countless prudential issues in pastoral work to be worked out in the context of a team of sober-minded, self-controlled, self-sacrificial leaders who check one another’s blind spots, and shore up each other’s weaknesses. Together, such men learn over time to be hardest on themselves, not their flock.

The heart of Christian leadership is not taking up privileges, but laying them down; not gravitating toward the easy work, but gladly crucifying personal comfort and ease to do the hard work to serve others; “not domineering over those in [our] charge, but being examples” of Christlike self-sacrifice for them (1 Peter 5:3).

When trying to discern between silly controversies to avoid and conflicts to engage with courage, pastors might ask:

Is this conflict about me — my ego, my preferences, my threatened illusion of control — or about my Lord, his gospel, and his church? In other words, is this for my glory or Christ’s? Am I remembering that my greatest enemy is not others, or even Satan, but my own indwelling sin?
What is the overall tenor of my ministry, and our shared ministry as a team? Is it one fight after another? Are there seasons of peace? Do I appreciate peace, or does it strangely make me nervous and send me looking for the next fight? Do I need conflict because I crave attention and drama? Is securing and then preserving Christian peace clearly my goal?
Am I going with or against my flesh, which inclines me to fight when I shouldn’t, and back down when I should kindly, patiently, gently engage? As the servant of the Lord, not self, am I avoiding petty causes that an unholy part of me wants to pursue, while taking on the difficult, painful, righteous, and costly causes that an unholy part of me wants to flee? And here we might ask about online versus “real life” in our own churches as well: Is this conflict actually my responsibility and objective calling in my church, or am I neglecting my real-life church to chase my curiosities online?
Am I simply angry at my opponents, desiring to show them up or expose them, or am I compassionate for them, genuinely praying that God would free them from deception and grant them repentance? Am I inclined to anger against them? Are tears for them even a possibility?

One last practical word here before we close. Let me mention Bob Yarbrough’s commentary on yet another place where Paul exhorts pastors to stay out of stupid tussles. First Timothy 4:7 says, “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.” Yarbrough writes,

Some ideas or proposals are so far beyond the pale of plausible that a pastor has no time or business giving them the dignity of extensive attention. This does not mean writing people off crudely. But overall, Paul’s view (and example) is to focus on and promulgate the truths of Christ and the faith, not to be distracted with undue attention to aberrant beliefs. There are contemporary analogies, for example, in conspiracy theories, so-called urban legends, and endless issue-oriented (and often polemical) blogs and websites from which most pastors find it wise to recuse themselves. (Pastoral Epistles, 238)

To be clear, this is not a reductionistic call for all pastors to stay off social media (though many find that wise). Rather, more holistically — in our preaching and teaching, our conversations and emails, our text messages and online comments — do we “focus on and promulgate the truths of Christ and the faith”?

Who Sets the Agenda?

Practically, then, one question to ask ourselves as pastors — about our preaching schedule, about our meeting agendas, about our conversations — is, Who sets the agenda? Is it the world? Is it what’s trending on Twitter? Is it the never-ending flow of daily news that keeps us from giving our limited attention to what’s most important and enduringly relevant? Is it the latest error you’ve been made aware of in a famous church or Christian spokesman far, far away? Or is it even the loudest, most immature voices in our own church?

When Yarbrough mentions Paul’s “example” in the quote above, he adds this footnote:

It is an ongoing source of scholarly frustration that Paul is not more specific about the names and views of his opponents. He tends to focus on what he holds to be true and redemptive rather than allow gospel detractors to set the agenda for his remarks or exhaust his energies in venting so as to profile them.

Paul focuses on what he holds to be true and redemptive — and he does not “allow gospel detractors to set the agenda.” That is a good word for pastors in the Information Age. To be clear, it’s not that gospel detractors don’t inform Paul’s ministry. Indeed they do. We have thirteen letters from Paul that give evidence to his being seriously informed by, and aware of, quite a number of grave errors in his day. However, being aware of error, and responding to error through a “focus on what [we hold] to be true and redemptive,” is a far cry from letting error set the agenda.

God means for his ministers, together, by his Spirit, to strike the balance, dynamic as it can be. We can learn to avoid foolish controversies and move wisely toward genuine conflicts. We can be unafraid of disagreements while not creating divisions. In a world of haters, trolls, and brawlers, we are to be men, set apart by Christ to lead his church, who fight well, in love, for peace.

Brothers, we have a countercultural calling in this age, not only as pastors but as Christians. Don’t give in. Don’t coast. Don’t let the world take your lunch. Save both yourself and your hearers. “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock” (Acts 20:28). “And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4).

My goal in this article is to briefly consider a specific pastoral question: What is a wise approach to those in your church who see a secular therapist? Since this question is part of a long and winding road, we will make a couple of stops before we arrive at an answer.

The modern therapeutic era made its first obvious appearance with Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his associates in the early 1900s. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875–1961) was among those associates. Both men had religion in view as they developed their therapeutic approaches.

Freud’s theory created a doctrine of the person that attempted to explain both the conscience and belief in God as mechanisms within the person rather than as evidence of humanity-before-God. Jung was even more deliberately anti-Christian as he reacted against his Swiss Reformed upbringing.1 He replaced God with the Self and sought to rectify what he thought were imbalances in Christianity. His teaching is less frequently cited today (perhaps with the exception of Jordan Peterson). You will, however, find that Jung’s Self and the centrality of our internal experience quietly remain the center of modern psychotherapy. Together, Freud and Jung announced the emergence of what we might call secular priests.

Christians would expect the rise of a secular priesthood. Secular people want help, but they don’t have pastors or a church community. Instead, they go to their friends and therapists. But I see, especially in Jung, something more than secular therapists filling a secular void. At times throughout history, perhaps particularly in the 1900s, the church tended to focus on combatting the rise of liberalism, while careful work on soul care languished. By the 1950s, many churches emphasized the end times, neglecting to create fresh applications of Scripture for present-day pastoral care.

How did the world of secular therapies grow so quickly? A secular community wanted help, and many churches were not listening carefully to their people or bringing the direction and comfort of Christ in meaningful ways. Instead, church cultures commonly suggested that Christians should feel happier than the rest of the world and have fewer problems. When that becomes the normal Christian life, churches lose their voice and can no longer speak into daily trouble. We are recovering from that era, but slowly, and sometimes in ways that mimic the secular therapies.

Appeal of Secular Psychotherapy

American psychotherapy accelerated during the decades after World War II but with a different feel from its European lineage. Given the profound differences between war-torn Europe and the relatively unspoiled and victorious United States, American therapies were more optimistic, favored autonomy and the freedom to live with fewer constraints, and believed in the agency of individuals to help themselves.

We might suspect as much, for these therapeutic foundations were forged in an unleashed economy that was ready to accommodate new desires. The birth-control pill was on standby to push those personal freedoms into sexual realms. The self, as a result, officially had a makeover and was reframed in various ways. One such reframing is “the empty self” — hollow, consuming, and hoping to be full. A better-known version is called “expressive individualism,” in which feelings become the new morality — they should be expressed to others, and they should guide us.2

There are other perspectives on our humanity. The study of the brain is in the news, and our self-understanding tends to follow media interests. Who are we, according to this perspective? We are bodies and brains. The feelings that are so important to us are embedded in our brains, as are our sexual preferences (or sexual confusion). Since our brains can be changed profoundly by our experiences, hardships and trauma seem to etch into our brains, and only rewiring the brain can undo it.

This perspective is best known from Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score. It is also represented in a catalog of recent Christian books about the physical body in life and worship. My point in highlighting this perspective is not so much that an interest in the body is misguided, but that it is triggered by technological developments and cultural trends.

Should secular psychotherapy receive the credit (or blame) for these changes? Not exactly. Modern psychotherapies are not so much leading the culture as they are taking notes. Therapists are known for their listening skills. These skills are at the heart of their broad appeal. Their clients feel known, which is a prized and rare human experience. As they listen, therapists have found so much wanting and so much pain, and they have designed their therapeutic models around that neediness and hurt.

If we want to look for the more powerful influences on our changing views of ourselves, we look to the world broadly more than just its smaller slice of secular therapies. The world is the sub-biblical culture that is in the air around us, and it cannot be reduced to one particular participant — like secular therapists — in that culture.

How Do We Respond?

Now to the question about people in your church seeing secular therapists. What might we do when Christians confide in secular priests? This question becomes even more significant when we learn that clients tend to drift toward the worldview of their therapists.3

All secular theories receive at least two biblical critiques. First, they do not see their patients as persons before God, but prize independence and self-care as the goal rather than the problem. Second, they are reductionistic in that they point to certain influences in our lives as fundamental, such as past victimization or early-childhood attachments, while neglecting (or not seeing) other influences, such as our own hearts and moral agency.

Those who embrace secular care, therefore, will be more prone to managing their own world rather than learning dependence on Christ in weakness, and they may miss how the heart is the real center of human life. They certainly will not be encouraged to see the connections between life and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Given these critiques, our preference would be for pastors to vet potential counselors just as they would vet elders, church staff, and others who do the work of ministry. That is the ideal. We would direct church members to Christian counselors skilled in both understanding people and applying God’s word to the whole person.

Vetting Counselors, Processing Care

Vetting, however, has its challenges. Christian counselors share a number of characteristics with their secular counterparts. Some are experienced; some are less so. Some are skillful and know people well; some are blunt objects that offer an inflexible script. “Christian” does not mean competent. We can inquire into theological orthodoxy, but orthodox beliefs do not equal orthodox practice, and orthodox beliefs do not reveal one’s character and experience.

And what if congregants are already seeing a secular therapist? Or perhaps they cannot find a local Christian counselor with the needed skills for a particular problem. We are unlikely to prohibit those in our churches from seeing secular therapists, a move that would come close to transgressing the bounds of pastoral authority. Among secular counselors, some are foolish in how they steer everyone away from “toxic relationships,” fail to distinguish severe offenses from minor ones, or neglect skills in self-control and humility. Others work out of the wisdom tradition that existed among the ancient Near Eastern nations and persists today. They do not know the true God, but they have keen instincts on how to live well, and they offer concrete advice that is easily reframed in a larger scriptural context.

These are some of the complexities of pastoral care in an environment where there are more pastoral needs than there are those who can care well for those in need.

A worthy goal would be to become familiar with the Christian counselors around us who have been helpful to people we know, and offer to subsidize that care. Also, if we know people who receive formal secular care, we can give them opportunities to reframe their care with Scripture. This offer could be as simple as asking someone how we can pray for them and their counseling. Prayer is a natural way that we connect troubles in daily life to Christ, and it takes us to those deep matters of the soul that can be reached only in Christ.

The Care All Christians Need

It’s important to remember that all of us receive “secular care” for our souls from neighbors, the Internet, advertising, movies, music — the list goes on. In a sense, we’re all listening to secular priests, and our corporate mission is to bring everything back into God’s house, where we can see its wisdom or folly clearly. Even more, we listen to Scripture and search together to see how God’s words in Christ go deeper and are more liberating and life-giving than even the best of what we hear in the world around us.

And so, prodded perhaps by secular therapists who listen well, we carefully listen to the troubles of people’s lives so that they feel known, and we also carefully listen to Scripture until God’s words sound as good, true, and beautiful as they are. Consider the counsel of J.I. Packer:

As a Puritan once put it, the pastor must study two books, not just one. Certainly, he must know the book of Scripture. . . . He must also be a master in reading the book of the human heart. He must know men no less well than he knows his Bible.4

The task is not easy, but it can be accomplished in small steps: mature laypeople take initiative in “the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12), sermons make connections to trauma and other common struggles, Christian counselors have a person’s soul and life-before-God always in view, and we all insist that Christ reach into every dark or uncharted recess of the human heart with words that speak life in a way unlike any other.

Audio Transcript

Good morning on this Christmas Day. We’re honored to share this holiday together with you. And for you, Pastor John, on such a day, I actually have no question for you. I want to clear the decks and let you take it from here, to share front-burner thoughts with us. What’s on your mind as you think about Scripture and meditate on such a glorious day like today?

On this Christmas Day, what I would like to do is to try and help you, all our listeners, to marvel at the coming of the eternal Son of God into the world. I want to help you marvel today. Jesus is coming back to this earth, the Bible says, “to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). That’s his destiny — to be marveled at by millions on that day.

And Christmas is a great day for rehearsing what it will be like to marvel at Jesus on that day — because Christmas rivets our attention on four stupendous realities, which, if we see them for what they really are, will cause our hearts to marvel at

the mysterious greatness of God, who was simply there before there was anything else,
the fact that this infinite, eternal Creator entered his creation as the God-man, Jesus Christ,
the happy reason for why he came to creation, a creation in high treason against him, and
the boundless joy offered to all because of what Jesus did when he came.

Let’s take these four realities one at a time and see if we can awaken in our souls Christmas marveling, last-day marveling in advance.

1. God is and always was.

The first Christmas marvel is the mysterious greatness of God, who was simply there before there was anything else. When God commissioned Moses in Exodus 3:14 to tell the people of Israel who had sent him, God said, “I Am Who I Am. . . . Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I Am has sent me to you.’” What does that mean?

It means that the God of the Bible, the God over all history and all reality, simply is and always was. He is absolute reality: “I am who I am. I simply am.” He had no beginning; he will have no ending. There was no reality before him; there is no reality outside him unless he wills it and creates it. Before creation, he is all that was: no space, no universe, no emptiness, no dark, no cold and endless vastness — only God. God was and is absolute reality. All else, from galaxies to subatomic particles, is secondary.

We tend to think that the material universe, with all its vastness, is the main reality. It’s not. It’s secondary — secondary at the most. God is reality. He carries the universe, so to speak, like a peanut in his pocket. Everything that the James Webb Space Telescope or the electron microscope shows us is as nothing compared to God. Let this sink in, because if we don’t start with this staggering reality and marvel, nothing else will have the wonder that it should. Nothing else will be marvelous the way it should be.

2. The Creator entered creation.

The second Christmas marvel is the wonder that this infinite, eternal Creator entered his creation in the person of Jesus — truly man, truly God. Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” They responded, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” And Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:56–58).

You’re kidding me. “Before Abraham was, I am.” He could have said, “Before Abraham was, I was.” That would have been spectacular enough. But he didn’t. He said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” because he is the great “I Am” of Exodus 3:14, very God of very God, absolute being in the flesh. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17) — absolute being. I Am Who I Am “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

This has happened by a divine conception in the womb of a virgin, Mary. She was staggered at the news and said, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God” (Luke 1:34–35). “Before Abraham was, I am.” At Christmas, I Am Who I Am became a man.

3. Jesus came to die and to save.

The third Christmas marvel is the unspeakably happy reason for why he came into this creation in high treason against him. Why did he enter the very creation that regarded him so lightly — indeed, with such dishonor? Here’s the simplicity and beauty and glory of Paul’s simple, straightforward answer: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). Or the words of Jesus himself: “The Son of Man came . . . to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

How can that be? God can’t die. But the God-man can die. So, Hebrews 2:14–15 says he took on a human nature “that through death” — because you can’t die if you don’t have the right nature to die. He took on a human nature “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death . . . and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” The great I Am Who I Am came into the world, into this rebellious creation, to die and to save.

4. Christmas is for everyone.

Finally, the fourth Christmas marvel is that the gift of the Christmas incarnation is for everyone.

“Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43).
“Whoever hears [Jesus’s] word and believes him who sent [Jesus] . . . does not come into judgment” (John 5:24).
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” (John 3:36).
“[He] died for us so that . . . we might live with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:10).

That is, so that we might live with the inexhaustibly satisfying, great I Am forever and ever, in whose presence “is fullness of joy” and at whose “right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Oh, let us marvel together on this Christmas Day that the great and only God simply is: “I Am Who I Am.” That this I Am became the God-man Jesus Christ. That he came not to destroy, but to save his treasonous creatures. And that by faith in him, our sins are forgiven, and our judgment is passed. We will live forever in the presence of this infinite, kind, all-satisfying I Am. May I wish you this kind of Merry Christmas.

Bethlehem would prove to be the perfect town.

Ancient Israel had no better spot for this quiet yet promising birth — for a royal heir who would grow up in the boonies but come to die in the capital.

On its own, the little town was not great. It was far more like the rural village of Nazareth than celestial Jerusalem. But Bethlehem was iconic for its potential — the city of David — the place where Israel’s greatest king was born and raised, before ascending to the throne and founding the city of kings.

Unlike the splendor of Jerusalem, and unlike unimpressive Nazareth, Bethlehem had a veiled majesty. So did the day of Jesus’s birth. From all appearances, this newborn was ordinary, even earthy — wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid, of all places, in the spot where barn animals fed. So too his first visitors were plain and unsophisticated: shepherds keeping watch on the night shift.

Yet the majestic host of heaven had come to announce this birth. Something splendid was in the offing — but humbly, slowly, patiently. Big city Jerusalem would wait in the distance for more than three decades.

Bethlehem: From Majesty to None

Christmas marks the eternal divine Son “leaving” the majesty of heaven, so to speak. In truth, he came to earth without leaving heaven. Not ceasing to be God, he took to himself our humanity. He “did not count equality with God” and his divine majesty “a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,” and there, in the city of David, “being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7). He “emptied himself” not by losing divinity but by taking our humanity. And not only did he descend, in birth, to the veiled majesty of Bethlehem but even lower in his backwater childhood in Nazareth.

There, as Isaiah had foretold seven centuries before,

he grew up before him like a young plant,and like a root out of dry ground;he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,and no beauty that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2)

“No majesty” need not mean that he was especially ugly — that too might draw the wrong attention — but that he was pretty normal — “no form or majesty that we should look at him.” He was no Adonis, no sight of masculine beauty to behold. Not so handsome as to stand out and draw attention.

Veiling his divine majesty with humanity, he lived among us, as one of us, for more than three decades in the very “no majesty” of normal humanity that most of us know so well.

Galilee: Majesty Through Man

After decades in obscurity, Jesus “went public” in his thirties as a teacher of the masses, and a discipler of men. Those who followed him did so not because of his looks or wealth or political power, but they were won by his extraordinary words, and accompanying miracles, which he performed to give glory to God. So Luke 9:42–43 reports,

Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astonished at the majesty of God.

How striking, in such circumstances, that he had been so clear with his words, and so humble in his demeanor, that it was God’s majesty, not his own, that astonished the crowds. This is what majesty does: it astounds, it amazes, it overwhelms. It inspires awe and makes human hearts marvel. It portrays a kind of magnificence that is deserving of worship (Acts 19:27). Yet Jesus himself was so plain, so normal, so human. No one spoke like this man (John 7:46), and did what he could do (John 9:32), yet he relentlessly looked and pointed to heaven. When the crowds stood in awe of him, and saw his unnerving normalcy, they found themselves astounded at the majesty of God.

On the Mount: Majesty in Man

Still, the divine majesty the crowds saw through him soon became a divine majesty his disciples would see in him. His inner circle of Peter, James, and John would get the first glimpse, ahead of time, of his unveiled majesty to come.

At his “transfiguration” on the mountain, the Father showed them the coming majesty that was veiled during Jesus’s state of humiliation in the days of his flesh. Later Peter would tell about the sight they beheld. Speaking especially for James and John, he writes,

we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. (2 Peter 1:16–18)

Peter had the privilege of being one of the three who, ahead of time, witnessed his majesty — that is, Jesus’s own divine-human majesty that would be secured and revealed on the other side of the cross. In his resurrected, glorified state, the God-man — divine from all eternity, and now fully human forever as well — would come into his unsurpassed human majesty. The one who from all eternity shared in divine majesty (in heaven) and took on human no-majesty in his state of humiliation (Bethlehem and Nazareth), and pointed to divine majesty (Galilee), would soon shine in Jerusalem with divine majesty, and be the man of divine majesty forever (New Jerusalem).

Jerusalem: Majesty on the Cross

At that transfiguration, what still lay before him was the cross, inglorious and glorious, horrible and wonderful. Here, in Jerusalem, his last and culminating act of humiliation would also, in time, prove to be the first great act of exaltation and cosmic majesty. As he says in John 12:31–32, having arrived in the holy city, in his near approach to the cross,

Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

John then adds that Jesus “said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die” (John 12:33). His lifting up to the cross would be both his last great act of self-humbling and, simultaneously, his first lifting up to glory.

Zion: Majesty on the Throne

Three days later the veil was lifted. His Father raised him to fully human, glorified, new life. Then, for forty days, his divine-human majesty could shine out in fuller strength, before he would be lifted up yet again, now to heaven itself, there to sit, in ultimate honor, “at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3; also 8:1).

His mission finished, purification for sins complete, his majesty comes full circle: from heaven, to earth, to Nazareth and Galilee, finally to Jerusalem, and back to heaven, now to await one final move: the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth, where Jesus will reign with divine-human majesty beyond our imagining. Then will he fulfill, in finality, the great Bethlehem prophecy of Micah 5:

You, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,from you shall come forth for meone who is to be ruler in Israel,whose coming forth is from of old,from ancient days. . . .And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be greatto the ends of the earth.And he shall be their peace. (Micah 5:2, 4–5)

Human and divine. He is son of David, yet one whose coming forth is from of old. A ruler in Israel, and over all the nations, he shepherds in the very strength of God almighty, and as God almighty, and in the majesty of God’s own name. At long last, the king has come, with God-bestowed splendor and majesty (Psalm 21:5), Messiah who in his majesty rides “out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness” (Psalm 45:4).

Bethlehem was perfect for such a birth. Quietly and unexpectedly as he came, Christmas Day too would change everything, in time, and remake both heaven and earth.

Now, by faith, we see him exalted. Soon, by sight, we will behold his full majesty.