Audio Transcript

We love receiving emails that crystallize abstract thoughts into concrete questions. Today, we have an intriguing question from Jacob about the importance of popularity and likeability in our gospel witness. Jacob wonders if being disliked by others makes him a bad representative of Christ. Here’s his email: “Pastor John, am I wrong if people around me don’t like me? Does being unliked by others make me a bad representative of Christ? We can’t be people-pleasers all the time, or we will be pushovers. At what point does our seeking to be accepted by people compromise our faithfulness to God?”

I think what might be helpful to do in answer to Jacob’s question is to illustrate how he might go about answering his own question from Scripture. I hope, in doing it this way, that one hundred questions of this nature might be answered, in the sense that people will realize that all John Piper does to get ready for these little ten-minute talks is to open his Bible, find some Scriptures that come close to relating to the issue, think about them, and then put his thoughts down.

Frankly, I think most people who listen to APJ, which is a particular kind of people, could do this if they were encouraged to work at it. So, that’s what I’m doing — I’m encouraging you. You could do this. You could have your own little APJ. I’d like to empower you to do that.

How to Ask Scripture

The first thing I did was to type the word please, because we’re talking about when it is right to please people and when it is not right to please people. So, I typed the word please into my Logos. There are a lot of different Bible programs out there. I happen to use Logos. I told it to find all the places where please or pleased is used in Paul, because I knew that there are a bunch of places in Paul that I couldn’t think of where this very issue is dealt with — of sometimes pleasing people and sometimes not pleasing people.

A bunch of uses of please, not all of them relevant, came up. I picked out the five that were relevant, isolated them, and began to read them. And as I read them, I circled, and I underlined, and I emboldened words that seemed relevant for answering the question.

Now, when is it right to please people? When is it wrong to please people? Is Paul tipping me off in these verses as to when he does it and when he doesn’t do it? I assume Paul is not contradicting himself, so here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to read you these five verses and show you what I saw. Because I think if you could see it for yourself, then you wouldn’t have to write APJ. We’re into empowering people to go to the Bible and to find God and help there, not to be dependent on me.

Galatians 1:10

So, here we go — Galatians 1:10. Paul has just said some unbelievably harsh things about those who are bringing a different gospel. He says, “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” — damned (Galatians 1:9). Now, those are not pleasing words to the false teachers, I dare say. Should Paul worry about that? He has just displeased somebody, big time. My guess is that lots of contemporary readers don’t like his words either.

Then he says in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” The least we can conclude from these words is that sometimes, when the gospel is being corrupted, being a faithful servant of Christ will require harsh words. We should not let that stand in our way, that those words are displeasing to some people.

1 Thessalonians 2:4–6

Number two is 1 Thessalonians 2:4–6. Here’s what Paul says:

Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed — God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others.

That seems to me to be really helpful, because Paul mentions three things (at least) that he is trying to avoid when it comes to pleasing other people in the way he talks. He’s avoiding flattery, he’s avoiding giving a pretext for greed, and he’s avoiding trying to get glory from people. In other words, what Paul was opposed to here was trying to please people by buttering them up in the hope of getting money or getting praise and glory.

The key issue in 1 Thessalonians 2 is not primarily whether somebody likes or doesn’t like what you say. The issue is, Are you self-serving, or are you others-serving? Are you manipulating the relationship to try to say what they want to hear because you want money, or you want glory, or you want something that they don’t expect you to want, given what you’re saying?

Colossians 3:22

Here’s the third text, Colossians 3:22, which says, “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” It seems to me that what Paul means by “eye-service” is that the goal of somebody who talks or acts with eye-service is not to go any deeper than what meets the eye, which is why Paul contrasts it with “sincerity of heart” and “fearing the Lord.” In other words, pleasing someone might be fine if it is not insincere and if it doesn’t compromise fearing the Lord.

1 Corinthians 10:31–33; Romans 15:1–2

Really quickly, the two passages that tell us Paul does try to please people are 1 Corinthians 10:31–33 and Romans 15:1–2, which go like this:

Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of [you] please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.

When Paul is trying to please others, he says five things that make it good:

I’m not seeking my own advantage.
I’m seeking their advantage.
I’m trying to bring them to salvation.
I’m seeking their good.
I’m seeking to build them up — that is, in faith and holiness.

On to the Answer

In summary, I think the answer to Jacob’s question about when it’s right and when it’s wrong to please people would go something like this. Again, all I’m doing now is trying to summarize. This doesn’t come out of nowhere. I’m just trying to summarize what we’ve seen in these verses.

If you are not motivated by flattery, and if you are not motivated by trying to manipulate people to get money, glory, or praise for yourself, and if you are not speaking or acting insincerely, but in the fear of God, and if you are seeking their advantage, their good, their salvation, and their upbuilding — if all those things characterize your behavior and your speech, then yes, seek to please people. Your effort to please them will be protected from sin, and it will be used for righteousness and for the glory of God.

Fathers, I have a confession: I get “the feels” around all things Christmas. Listening to nonstop holiday music (after Thanksgiving, of course), the sight of a tree on a car, exterior illumination that would make Clark Griswold proud, the smell of evergreen — I love it all. I don’t need Andy Williams to tell me, “it’s the most wonderful time of the year,” but I sure can’t wait until he does!

If you don’t relate to this confession, though, don’t worry. I’ve got another one: on multiple occasions, I’ve arrived at Christmas morning feeling that it snuck up on me. This moment of recognition usually happens in the middle of our Christmas Eve service, when I glance around and see my wife and our five kids joyfully singing praises to “Christ, the newborn King,” or listening intently to the story of Jesus’s birth. On a number of years, this joyful moment has been accompanied in my heart with a twinge of sadness. Another Christmas has almost passed, and yet again, it snuck up on me.

Stewards of Hearts

I’m aware that these two confessions may sound contradictory. On the one hand, as a man who’s a kid at heart, I eagerly anticipate and count down the arrival of the holiday season. On the other hand, as a father who’s a steward of hearts, I have a tendency to arrive at the end of the holiday season and feel like I wasn’t ready for it — and now it’s gone.

I’ve heard quite a few fathers say that their daughter’s wedding day snuck up on them. They don’t mean they didn’t see it coming or were surprised by its arrival. No, it snuck up because the many things they needed to do (host family, write toasts, pay invoices, and much more) distracted them from the one thing they were honored to be: “Daddy.” In short, the significance of what they were a part of was lost on them until it had passed. Even if they were present in the moment, they were not prepared to win the moment.

This illustration has helped put words to the sadness that I’ve felt at the end of too many holiday seasons (and I don’t think I’m alone). If we are not mindful on the front end, the many things we “need” to do this December will distract us from the one thing we need to be: children of our good and generous God. And if we fathers personally neglect the significance of the Advent season, it’s unlikely we will lead our families any differently.

Fathers, let’s do more this year than be physically present; let’s get spiritually prepared to lead our family to win the moments. If you’re inspired to join me but don’t know where to begin, I’d like to offer three practices that have consistently enabled our family to win the holiday season, moment by moment.

1. Create Devotional Moments

The first practice is to create devotional moments. By “devotional moments,” I’m talking specifically about creating time for the family to gather and hear God’s word together.

Before I share what my wife and I have found helpful, let me make sure you are picturing our family correctly. Imagine a quiet and orderly group of serious, scholarly believers, gathered together to eagerly learn from the Scriptures. Got those people in mind? Now picture the opposite of that group. That’s our family. There are seven of us, and for some reason just saying the words “family devotion” produces an effect like drinking a Red Bull, where everyone “gets wings.” Even the dogs get in on the madness.

But while family devotions aren’t always easy and can go south quickly, we’ve discovered that a little planning and perspective can set us up for success. Years ago, we set it as our goal to create family devotional times that were fun, engaging, and memorable. We observed that many kids leave Christian homes feeling that the Scriptures are boring, irrelevant, and hard to understand. Not only do our three goals counter these, but they can create a learning environment that kids might even look forward to. As a father, I consider it a huge win anytime I can spark in my children an eagerness, or even an openness, for the living and active word of God (Hebrews 4:12).

“Fathers, do what it takes to carve out some planning time on the front end of the holidays (now!).”

During the holidays, we try to gather at least two times a week for family devotions. For us, family-devotion topics typically emerge as my wife and I share with each other what we are learning in our respective Advent devotionals. If we have any “secret sauce” to share, however, it’s what we do next. Julia and I then spend a few minutes brainstorming about three things: teaser, takeaway, and treasure hunt. (The more you do this, the better you get at it.)

The teaser starts our family devotions. We tee up our time with a fun question that gets everyone talking and points toward the message. The takeaway is the one big idea from Scripture that we want the family to walk away with. A concise takeaway focuses the devotion and gives the family language to rally around. Last, the treasure hunt is when things really get fun. Prior to the family devotion, we secure some sort of holiday treat (like a family game, a dessert to make, a holiday movie) and hide it somewhere in the house. Here’s the catch: the treat is hidden somewhere that is connected to something from the devotional. The one rule about the treasure hunt is that all the kids have to discuss and hunt together.

I hope you can envision how powerful it can be to create family devotional moments that are fun, engaging, and memorable.

2. Capitalize on Seasonal Moments

The second practice is to capitalize on seasonal moments. Unless you live on Mount Crumpit, others in your area have already put together holiday events that can provide your family with memorable moments. If setting aside time to pray and think creatively is the key to the first practice, this second one hinges on the willingness to do a little calendar coordination. In all likelihood, your area schools will have holiday programs, churches will host Christmas concerts, community theaters will produce shows, and the city at large will plan a slew of seasonal events. It’s all there, simply waiting to be leveraged by those who will take some time now to look ahead and make a few decisions.

For years, we had the same experience over and over: I would find the greatest holiday events for the family to enjoy — and we wouldn’t ever go. Before you think I live with a bunch of hermits, I should add that I would find these events the day of the show, and either the tickets would be sold out or someone in the family had other plans. Bah humbug!

My wife had been telling me about this thing called “planning” that adults sometimes do, and when I finally applied it to the holiday season it was a game changer. At the start of the Christmas season, we take some time to identify important moments for each family member (so we can all plan to attend), as well as a few special holiday events. (By the way, news of a special seasonal event makes a great treasure hunt discovery after an enjoyable family devotion!)

3. Copy Memorable Moments

Last, I would encourage you to copy memorable moments year after year. It doesn’t take long in life to realize that change is inevitable — and navigating through a world of constant change can lead to a feeling of instability, especially among children. As a father, I long for my children to know they have a God who is “the stability of your times” (Isaiah 33:6) and one who is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). As we teach these truths, we can also seek to create a home environment that models it. We have leaned on our family traditions as a way to provide a sense of constancy in an ever-changing world.

What are your family traditions that you copy year after year? Our holiday season is full of memorable and repeatable moments that provide an anchor for our family. We have traditions that are unique to us (“elf knock,” holiday game night after devotions, ham-and-steak holiday meal, stockings hid on Christmas morning, sibling gift exchange before Christmas) as well as some that I imagine many families do (family pajamas on Christmas Eve, birthday cake for Jesus, reading Luke 2 and praying together before opening gifts). To quote my good friend Cousin Eddie, a meaningful family tradition is “a gift that keeps on giving” year after year.

Seize the Season

The prophet Isaiah provides much-needed wisdom for what it’s going to take to see these ideas become a reality: “He who is noble plans noble things, and on noble things he stands” (Isaiah 32:8). Fathers, do what it takes to carve out some planning time on the front end of the holidays (now!). Get a plan for creating devotional moments, coordinate how you will capitalize on seasonal moments, and identify the memorable moments to copy year after year.

For those who apply these three simple practices, I am confident that you will look at your family on Christmas Eve with a whole lot of gladness and very little sadness. For this holiday season came, and you were ready for it.

Brian Tabb: I’m going to start off with a question for Pastor John. You wrote a book on Foundations for Lifelong Learning. In your talk, you mentioned something that may have surprised some people here, that you had new insights into this text in the Gospel of Matthew, which you wrote your PhD on, have taught, and have read for countless years. You said, “I saw this text totally new this week.” Share with us a little bit more about how that happens, that kind of new learning, even as somebody who has walked with the Lord for all these years, to offer some encouragement for this group — whether they’re near the beginning of their Christian life or advanced — to not settle for old insights, but keep going, keep pressing deeper into God’s Word.

John Piper: Well, it’s a no-brainer to believe and to say that the Bible, in every text, is inexhaustible. There is always more light to break forth, as the old Puritans used to say. There are angles, connections, implications, and roots that you haven’t seen. That’s the basic assumption. I’m cursed and blessed by being regularly perplexed. It’s a curse because I think it damps, at times, my praise. It’s hard to praise when you’re flabbergasted about the meaning of a text. I don’t like having praise to be a problem. I think we’re made to praise. Answering questions is a means to the end. It’s not the end. It’s just a necessary evil, and would that we could all see things at a flash.

That’s the way I am. I see problems everywhere. Being a lover of the inerrancy of the Bible, I know those problems are always my fault. They’re not God’s fault and not Jesus’s fault. There’s no fault in God, no fault in Jesus, and no fault in the Scriptures. There’s a fault in me. Some of my limitations are not faulty. I’m a finite person; that’s not a fault. But I am a sinner and I am culturally biased. I’ve got family issues, and there are all kinds of reasons why I would see things wrongly, so it’s both a curse and I think it’s also a great blessing.

My wife deals with this more than anybody. I’m just always a critical person about everything I read. She hates it when I go, “Ugh.” I’m reading something, reading the news, and I say, “Ugh!” She doesn’t want to hear this. She says, “Be positive, Johnny,” but she knows, as I do and others do, that it has produced great fruit for me to be troubled. God has opened my eyes to see many things I would not have otherwise seen, and I think the practical payoff of your question would be that at 77, I’m working my way through 2 Corinthians in Look at the Book. I’m creating episodes for Look at the Book by working through 2 Corinthians.

On my blitz that I just finished, I worked through 1 Corinthians 7–16. I saw new things every day, because I put Biblearc on one screen and Logos on the other screen. Email sits quietly over here on the other screen. I have my Wacom tablet on my desk, where I do my doodling, and I just look at the Book all day long. That’s all I do is look at the Book.

I arc a paragraph, and in arcing it, I have 10 questions. How does that relate to that? What’s the meaning of that? How did he use that? How does that relate back to chapter 7? Now, what would you do if you had 10 questions as you read a paragraph? The only thing I know to do is get out a piece of paper, take a pencil, and write them down. As you write them down, possible answers come to your mind, and you jot down the possible answer. As soon as you jot down the possible answer, other ideas come to your mind, and that little piece of paper becomes gold. It’s your discovery. Okay, I’ve got to stop. That’s enough.

Tabb: That’s great.

Piper: Thank you for asking.

Tabb: I think that in a few of the sessions, we’ve talked about typology or patterns. I think it would be helpful to just give a little bit more clarity, a little bit more help, especially in distinguishing between the sorts of patterns that the biblical authors themselves are drawing attention to or wanting us to see, and those that might maybe tell us more about our own creativity than about what the biblical writers had in mind. What sort of guidance would you give us as we try to distinguish between clear examples of biblical typology or more tenuous connections, and especially those that might be somewhere in between? We’ll start with Joshua, and then if others want to chime in on that as well, they can.

Joshua Greever: I remember, when I was an MDiv student, we would have debates amongst ourselves about whether such and such a person in the Old Testament was a type of Christ. These are the sorts of debates that seminarians will have, you know? One takeaway that I got from all of those discussions was this: to the degree to which the biblical text makes those connections for us, to that same degree we can be certain that it is a type of Christ.

Here I’m thinking of individual persons in the Old Testament but also major events in the Old Testament and major institutions of the Old Testament. Those are your three categories: major persons, major events, and major institutions of the Old Testament. To the degree in which later Old Testament writers pick those things up and comment on them, and then, of course, New Testament writers, we can make connections. To what degree do the New Testament writers actually draw those connections for us?

Sometimes scholars can be quite imaginative and creative in ways that the text doesn’t really point us in, so I think one safeguard is to go where the text takes you. What the text says, let’s say what that says, and if the text doesn’t quite draw it out for us maybe as we would have expected it to, then let’s be a little cautious. Maybe there’s a suggestion there, but let’s be cautious. That’s my first explanation for that.

David Mathis: Would you distinguish between commentators being imaginative and preachers being imaginative?

Greever: Maybe you could give me an example of what you’re thinking of. I think both can be quite imaginative.

Piper: There must be something behind that question.

Mathis: Well, I mean whether you might encourage one to be more or less imaginative, depending on what particular task they’re doing. If you are writing a commentary, I think you might want to limit those connections to particular grammatical markers or syntax or something that’s demonstrably in the text. But as a preacher, with your half-hour slot, and the possibility for making theological connections, I think I may encourage preachers to lean in more to those conceptual connections, while not pretending they’re demonstrably in the text. I think, the ones that are in the text, point them out and make the connections, but also that there would be encouragement for preachers to make conceptual, topical, theological links to Jesus in seeking to preach to the church in the context of worship. Thoughts on that?

Greever: I think good preaching not only says what the text says, but shows the people how the biblical author arrived at that conclusion. In other words, preachers should be following the logic of the biblical author, because we want to understand how to read our Bibles better when we regularly sit under the preaching of the Word. So I agree. I think, if we come across a text that is suggesting connections, maybe it’s an Old Testament text that’s suggesting connections to Christ, then I think the preacher would want to draw those connections out for the sake of greater faith, hope, and love.

Piper: But when you say “draw them out,” or you say “draw attention to conceptual connections,” do you mean that you can get from those connections a “Thus saith the Lord”?

Mathis: No.

Piper: That’s important, because my principle is, which agrees with that, to the degree that your audience is perplexed at how you saw what you saw, you lose authority. Therefore, I don’t encourage pastors to lean in unless they say it really carefully. I kind of tell them to lean away. In other words, I want them to find their meaning right there in the text or if, like in the one I just preached on, he’s quoting something back there, then we have to go back there to see what’s really there.

Maybe you have in mind Spurgeon. I’m listening to his autobiography right now. Spurgeon couldn’t open his mouth without quoting the Bible. Prick him; he bleeds Bibline. But the way he used the Bible was varied. He’d be walking down the street and see a dog and quote a psalm about a dog. “The dogs will not say to Israel . . .” What is that? That’s just a Bible-saturated person speaking Bible over dogs and sidewalks. That, to me, is a coloring of your sermon, but man, I so much want to blow people away with what is mandated as truth. It’s true.

I really think Jesus is God. That’s not a guess. I really think he’s a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek, an eternal sacrifice. I mean, there are so many absolute certainties in the Bible, thousands of them, that are glorious, breathtaking, and jaw-dropping. Why would we want to speculate? Just one more thing. You can see how skeptical I am about typology.

I was at TGC last week, and those speakers were pretty creative in some ways, and they were all good. They’re all good. However, one of them was drawing some patterns and connections. I was sitting there thinking, Maybe. Now, “maybe” is not good when you’re responding to preaching. You don’t want to think, “Maybe the pastor has something.” You’re going to preach every weekend. You don’t want people saying, “Maybe he’s got something there.” What good is that? I said something to somebody afterwards, wondering whether they felt similar. One guy said something to me. I like him so much because he speaks my language. He said, “Yeah, isn’t it amazing when guys find things in the Bible and God says, ‘Wow’?” I love it.

Tabb: Well, let’s press in a little bit different direction, especially thinking about some of the practical implications about reflecting on the life of David, the joy of the servant king. Maybe we’ll start with David Mathis, fittingly. What lessons do you think David’s life has to offer us, in terms of servant-leadership? He’s obviously the King of Israel, but just walking with the Lord and that balance of strength and gentleness. What help do you think we could have in that category of servant-leadership?

Mathis: That’s good. It is a recent question whether we should use the term servant-leadership anymore. I think this would not have been even asked 20 years ago or 10 years ago. Everyone just assumed, servant-leader, of course, absolutely, servant-leader.

I think it’s a fair question to ask, and I think I would defend its use. It’s a helpful question to ask, because we can clarify in what sense we mean it. If servant-leader means that the leader empties himself of his post, abdicates his role, empties himself of his power and ability that could be used to help people, and he basically adopts the whims and demands and requirements of others, then we don’t do that. That’s not what leaders do. Leaders don’t cower to the demands or requirements or whims of people when they think they know what’s best for themselves at the moment.

But if servant-leader means that the position of leadership, its posts, its abilities, its authority, is used for the good of others rather than to take advantage of others so that there’s a service of their good, whether they’re seeing it or not, then it’s good. We’re defining their good on God’s terms, not on their own terms. To serve them in the nature of the work, that’s the essence of Christian leadership.

That’s what Paul would call being workers for the joy of the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:24). It’s not that the Corinthians are making certain demands and Paul empties himself of his power and cowers to their demands, but on God’s terms, Paul has thoughts and ideas for what’s best for them in Christ, and he makes it for their joy. This is the Christian Hedonistic point, and it’s so helpful in this. Servant-leadership doesn’t only pursue the good of others and merely crucify self, but crucifies sin in me, the leader, and pursues a better joy than what 1 Peter calls “shameful gain” (1 Peter 5:2).

There’s a kind of shameful gain in leadership that you should be ashamed of. You’re pursuing a certain gain that is private comforts, pleasures, and personal gain to the loss of the people, or for David, personal gain to the loss of the nation. That would be a shameful gain. But there is a gain that’s without shame, a gain for the leader that’s commensurate with leading the people well and for their good. On God’s terms, the good leader looks and sees their good, their joy, and makes it his joy — which is a better joy than private joy — to work for their joy. That would be, I think, a kind of servant-leadership worth defending.

If you want a text for that, a model of that in Jesus, if we’re talking in terms of emptying, that’s Philippians 2, right? He emptied himself. He did not empty himself of divinity, of divine power, but emptied himself of the prerogative to not come and get messy in a sinful work, and have sinners act on him to crucify him. He emptied himself of that prerogative, so that he might serve and take his joy in the joy of his people. The emptying is not an emptying of his ability and leadership and post, but it’s a taking it upon himself to do good to others and seek their joy. I would defend servant-leadership on those terms.

Tabb: I think if we had a fifth session, I wonder if the fifth session would be on David, the friend? For example, his friendship with Jonathan is one of the more developed masculine relationships that you see in the Old Testament. You also have some really painful friendship examples of betrayal and that sort of thing within David’s life. I’m wondering if any of you would like to speak to reflections on what we might glean from David’s friendship with Jonathan, his experience of betrayal and loss interpersonally, and even just how that might connect with your own experience of life in ministry.

Greever: I’m happy to get us started, but I want to hear from you guys, too. It did strike me in my study of 1 Samuel how the kind of friendship between David and Jonathan that’s worth emulating is clearly not a mercenary friendship. That’s so clearly the case from Jonathan’s perspective, because from Jonathan’s perspective he doesn’t gain at all, from a worldly point of view, in handing over his weaponry, his armor, his robe, and saying, “I’m happy for you to be king, not me.” There’s clearly not a mercenary kind of sense here of friendship.

I think that’s worth reflecting on in our own friendships. Why do we want to befriend that person? Well, the answer is not so that they can scratch my back and make much of me in the world, so that everyone thinks I’m amazing because they’re connected to me, or something like that. That’s my first thought. It’s just kind of amazing how Jonathan is so willing to give up what would have been his throne. I’m curious to see what you guys would like to add to that remarkable friendship.

Mathis: I want to know more about Jonathan. Put that on the list of questions to ask in heaven. I want to know more about his character, his humility. As you said last night, as you put those forward — Jonathan strengthened his hand in God and then David strengthened himself in Yahweh, in that order — it made me think, does Jonathan excel David in spiritual maturity? Maybe not, maybe it’s totally mutual, but is David learning a spiritual maturity there, not just through the wilderness, but through Jonathan?

Then, very practically, I loved the moments where you lingered over strengthening his hand in God. That is so good for meditation, for application. It brings Hebrews 10:24 to mind, which says, “Provoke each other to love and good deeds.” It’s about knowing someone well enough that you don’t just provoke them as general humanity, but you’re close to them. You know what pushes their buttons, in good ways, and you provoke that person, not to anger, but you provoke them to love and good deeds. I’m assuming that’s what David received from Jonathan in that context.

Greever: I think that’s powerful, because in our world, friendship is often cloaked as simply, “I’m going to affirm you,” right? That’s what friendship is, and if you don’t affirm me, you’re not my friend. This happens all the time. But that’s not the way Jonathan is toward David. He tells him the truth. Now, he does affirm him, that is true. So, affirmation is not a problem.

But the nature of friendship is more than just simply, “I’m going to affirm you for whatever you think.” If that were the case, it would’ve sounded something like, “Don’t worry, David. You’re going to be fine, because you’ve got what it takes within you. Just believe in yourself. Just be strong for who you are, and it’ll turn out well in the end, and you be you.” That kind of a thing. That’s not at all the way it comes out. He strengthened his hand in God. I think there’s a definite difference between that and the way we couch friendship today as simply affirming someone.

Mathis: There are connections here to the previous question. If you’re talking about servant-leadership or relationships in which you are letting God define the terms of what’s good, there may be encouraging words to speak and genuinely affirm things. Other things need to be exposed, and we must do that.

I love what it says: He “strengthened his hand in God” (1 Samuel 23:16). This was a Godward strengthening. That opens up possibilities of particular texts to quote in a certain moment. You might express a truth stronger or softer depending on knowing that brother, his life, and that particular moment in his life, and doing that in a Godward way. It’s not strengthening his hand in himself. It’s not that. It’s strengthening his hand in God.

Tabb: Let’s stay with that. Can any of you think of an example where another friend in the Lord has strengthened your hand in God, has had that Jonathan role at a particular moment in your life and ministry to help you keep going? Anybody have one to share?

Kenny Stokes: I’ll tell you one from John Piper to me. That’s probably why it feels awkward. When I was called by God, confirmed by my wife and the elders in the congregation to take this role here at Bethlehem 25 years ago, and then again more recently. This is my seventh job at Bethlehem. John Piper came up to me after my seventh appointment and said, “Kenny, the good hand of the Lord is upon you.” I don’t know if you remember saying that. But there was a word, and it was very encouraging, very Godward, very confirming, very contextual, and I was personally strengthened.

Mathis: Seeing you sitting here, Kenny, reminds me of the time you and John and I were tag-teaming 1 Thessalonians in this room on Wednesday nights. This was probably 15 years ago. I came in and wanted to do the first session really Socratic. There were dozens of people, and I came in just asking all sorts of questions. I was asking questions, but I did it too much, so I leaned too far into asking questions, at least pedagogically as a teacher.

John sent me this email the next day. It was 1,500 to 1,800 words. He was very gracious. He handled me very graciously, and he was also very clear, “We can do better.” At the time, I was helping him with his calendar. I thought, “John Piper doesn’t have time for 1,800 words to me and Kenny about how we can do better on Wednesday nights.”

Stokes: You got 1,800, I got nine.

Mathis: Yours was just affirming. He was exercising Sam Crabtree’s affirmation ratio. But it was so helpful. That brings to mind another email I got not too long ago. I sent John an article I had worked on. I just wanted him to see it before I moved it on in the editorial process. He wrote back. I remember this exact quote. He said, “This bears the marks of haste.” You know what? You’ve encouraged me enough over the years, I felt loved in that. I thought, “I’m so glad I didn’t push this on to our publication. I need to go back to the desk and do this better. I don’t want to bear the marks of haste in a public article.” So, thank you.

Piper: You’re welcome.

Tabb: Let’s think more about another relationship that David had with Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth. This is a fascinating character in the Samuel narrative, and we see David’s surprising treatment of Mephibosheth. Maybe we could start with you, David, and then others can jump in on what we see there. What lessons do we glean from how he treats Jonathan’s son, who would have then been in the line of Saul, whose throne David takes over?

Mathis: The way it begins in 2 Samuel 9 is that David, having made all these military victories in 2 Samuel 8, is victorious wherever he goes. It’s one thing after another. David is a great military leader. You get to chapter 9 and the kingdom is established. He’s successful, victorious, triumphant, and he takes the initiative in 2 Samuel 9:1 to say, “Is there someone from the house of Saul that I can show kindness to for Jonathan’s sake?”

This is amazing. This is not like Joab. This is not the kind of question that comes out of Joab, saying, “How can I show kindness?” The reason it’s fresh is that I wanted so badly for this to be in the talk yesterday morning, and this is one of the things I had to cut because I didn’t want you to be late for your workshops. But there is a parallel here from Psalm 18:35, where David says, “[God’s] gentleness made me great.” God’s gentleness came to David and took root in him, and David was gentle with others.

Here in 2 Samuel 9:3, he says that he wants to show him “the kindness of God.” He’s not just showing him the kindness of David. He’s showing him the kindness of God. God has been kind to David, which has changed David, taken root in David, and he wants to show God’s kindness to Mephibosheth, to someone from Saul’s house. Even though 10 years ago Saul came after him and tried to kill him, he wants to show kindness to Saul’s house.

I do wonder, as someone who’s lived with this name (David) for more than 40 years, who is said to be a man after God’s own heart in Acts 13:22. It didn’t work with Saul. We’re looking for a man after God’s own heart. I wonder if it means that when it says he is a man after God’s own heart. Acts 13:22 says, “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.”

I don’t think that means that David merely does God’s will — that God has a heart, it manifests in a will, David hears the will, and he just does the will. I don’t think that’s all that’s at play, but this: that God has a heart, a kind of heart that manifests a will, and David has that kind of heart. The reason he does God’s will is he does it from the heart. He doesn’t just check the boxes and do what God commands. He has come to have God’s own heart, and I think Psalm 18:35 points to gentleness as an aspect of that heart. Second Samuel 9 points to kindness, that he wants to show kindness.

In Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, we see the kind of heart of the father that goes out to his son. He wants to run to greet him. That kind of heart has come to be in David as well. David has experienced that grace from God, and he wants to extend grace in the appropriate places. He’s the leader of Israel. He can’t just go around distributing grace to the Philistines, and grace to the Edomites. He has to fulfill his role as king, and he’s on the lookout for ways that he can extend God’s grace, God’s kindness, in fitting circumstances that don’t compromise the good of the nation, but show God’s kindness to someone in Saul’s house.

Greever: If I can push us toward Jesus, I think Jesus does that, too, climactically, right? I’m thinking there is a connection. I mean, you mentioned the parable of the prodigal son, but you know there’s that one text in Isaiah 55:3 that talks about “the kindnesses of David.” It’s plural there, right? Sometimes it’s translated as the steadfast love or acts of David or something, which is in Acts 13, right? The man after God’s own heart, I think, shows up as this. It is kindness, but it’s steadfast kindnesses, so it is kindness that God has promised and he is faithful to keep, which Jesus does climatically as the man after God’s own heart.

Piper: Yep, yep.

Mathis: I remember when you went to Cambridge, to Tyndale House, you did a commencement address for the TBI guys, now BCS guys, where you talked about how a dead dog loves a king. Do you remember that?

Piper: I remember the title.

Mathis: It was about Mephibosheth. There’s another part of the Mephibosheth story at the other end.

Piper: Two very different impacts of that story on me other than what has been said is, number one, when he comes back, Mephibosheth, he wants to give him what he deserves. He says, “I don’t need anything. You’re back. I don’t care about inheritance. You’re back.” I just thought, I want to love Jesus like that. I want to love my king that way. Just give me a little teeny little corner in heaven, just a little teeny shack if you’re there.

Number two, if you’re a pastor or a leader in any way, one of the hardest things for me, being as indecisive as I can be, is that you’re confronted with so many decisions that look like 60-40 decisions. I don’t know how to do outreach. I don’t know how to help the homeless. I don’t know how to do pastoral care. I don’t know if we should hire a new person. I don’t know if we should buy the property. I don’t know. Ah, indecisiveness.

David comes back, and Ziba has lied about Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth says, “I didn’t betray you. He’s lying.” David doesn’t know what’s true. He’s a king. He’s got a kingdom to run. He can’t do research on this. What does he do? He says, “Half for you, Ziba, and half for Mephibosheth.” That was an unjust decision. Ziba didn’t deserve a thing. He should’ve been shot, which he eventually was, I think. Ziba was a bad character, and Mephibosheth was gold. But David splits it 50-50 because he has work to do.

As a pastor, I feel like I had to make decisions. I cannot just dink around here. We’ve got a big church, and things have to get done. Somebody’s got to stop the buck. Kenny is my pastor now, right here, and he has to do this. He can get as much input as he wants, but he has to make decisions. That little story right there was very liberating for me.

Tabb: Let’s go to the end of your talk, Pastor Kenny. You closed with powerful encouragement for those who are stuck in David’s situation. You said, “May the joy of the Lord pull you out of it.” I’m just wondering if you can pull on that thread a little bit. What would that look like, practically, for the joy of the Lord to get somebody unstuck from serious sin? And I think we can also add to that: How might the joy of the Lord help to keep us out of such situations, as well?

Stokes: I said that because, with the assignment of David’s sin with Bathsheba, I not only had 2 Samuel 11–12, but I also had Psalm 51 and Psalm 32, which you made the point that the text in 2 Samuel doesn’t mention joy. So, how come I kind of hung it all on joy? It’s because we get in David’s head in Psalm 51, which he wrote when he confessed to Nathan. Then, I think we get in David’s head again in Psalm 32, which I’m guessing he wrote after the event, just enjoying, celebrating, the blessedness of forgiven sin.

The journey out of preventing sin, causing David to run downstairs and sing psalms instead of continuing to look at Bathsheba, is the fight for joy in God, just like the thing that would keep him causes him to stop this concealment. I mean, it was really ugly when I reviewed that stuff. I didn’t remember it being so ugly. David says, “Here, I have a message for you to give to your commander. You give it to him.” And it says, “Kill him.” I just thought that was really ugly. What keeps you from that? It’s the joy in the Lord, that you would enjoy Jesus more than your concealment.

Then, likewise with the confession. Read those two Psalms. I mean, David is in misery with his sin. He’s in misery concealing. His bones are getting crushed and probably eight times in those two psalms, he’s moving out of that, into confession, into forgiveness, into the grace of God by joy. I just saw this tractor beam of joy in the Lord, to pull us out of our sin and, when we’re in our sin, to pull us back to Jesus and, preventatively, to keep us from our sin. I just love the way the three lenses kind of went together: the narrative, the personal confession, and then his epilogue, his reflections on the blessedness of forgiven sin. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Tabb: Anybody want to add to that?

Piper: It is profoundly illuminating to realize nobody sins out of duty. There’s only one reason people sin: it’s going to feel good. Life is going to get better. It’s a lie. The feeling good is true, but the lie is life is going to go better because you’ve chosen this path. If that’s true, if pleasure and being drawn out with desire, not duty, is what is happening — as if someone thinks you have to get up in the morning and sin today because it’s your duty to sin — then that’s why this works. There’s only one way to fight desire, and that’s with a superior desire. I mean, you can try to fight desire with duty. It’ll last a while, like, “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. I can’t. Stop.” That just won’t last for a lifetime. It won’t.

I was talking to a missionary — we all know who this is — who went to 18 prostitutes, and then left the mission and left his wife. I sat down with him, and I said, “What happened? What happened? You were so effective. You were a good missionary. What in the world happened?” Here’s what he said. He said, “It just got too hard to fight anymore.” He was saying, “I can’t do this. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t,” and there needed to be an explosive joy, the expulsive power of a new affection, pushing the need for prostitutes out of his heart. Push them out. Your job in life is to be happier with Jesus than with a prostitute, happier with Jesus than with pornography, happier with Jesus than with money. That’s the battle.

That’s what we do here. Serious joy is that. Christian Hedonism is that. You will fail in the Christian life if you don’t realize that sin is driven by desire for pleasure, and Jesus provides a superior pleasure. If you don’t feel that, you’ve got work to do. That’s the war. Fight for joy. So, amen to what Kenny said.

Tabb: David, do you want to double-click on anything related to masculine strength and gentleness and what that looks like practically? Maybe think of a situation where it maybe needs a little bit more strength or a little bit more gentleness or just the right combination, the multidimensional approach.

Mathis: I think one thing I could clarify is that we’re prone to go to these extremes, like, “Oh, I need to always be this strong man with backbone, and never give ground,” or you always act with grace and parent with grace and have gentleness and kindness nonstop. The call is for wisdom. You’re being invited into the life of wisdom in the life of David. If you’ve developed a concept that leadership is only strength, then David is a corrective. If you’ve developed a concept that leadership is only kindness, and never battles against the Philistines, then David is a corrective.

These two things are mingling all the time, in terms of moments to manifest particular backbone in reading the moment, knowing this is what’s needed. A fool needs to be answered according to his folly at this moment. Other times, the fool should not be answered according to his folly, but with a kind of kindness or a cushioning or a gentleness or a patience, a manifestation of humility.

Being a parent has helped tremendously with this, in terms of having people in my house where I don’t just have interaction with them and then they go away, but we still live under the same roof. This is not an answer. It’s a wisdom call for parents. Wisdom is needed, and you don’t respond the same way every time. If you always respond with strength, you crush them. If you always respond with kindness or always respond with grace, if that’s the lead note with no strength, then you get them off in the wrong direction and teach them wrong things about the world.

What we need as parents, and what we need as leaders, is to have the backbone, to have strong arms, and know those moments when you need to have the gentle hand, the gentle touch. I think a very helpful thing to think about is going deeper into the characters of Joab and David, which are mixed characters. Joshua talked last night about David being mixed. Joab’s mixed, too. I mean, that’s a glorious moment in 2 Samuel 10, where Joab and Abishai are back-to-back, and he says, “I’ll take the Ammonites; you take the Syrians. I’ll help you out. Do this for the glory of God.” I mean, that’s their glory moment.

We shouldn’t think of Joab as all negative, and Abishai seems more righteous to me than Joab, but it’s still, “Sons of Zeruiah, what do I have to do with you?” But here’s an insight to Joab’s character. Joab acts from personal offense when he takes out Abner. There are probably two things at play there in taking out Abner. One, that’s Saul’s commander, and Joab too was a commander. David was going to have to choose between two commanders, and Joab was looking laterally at another commander, thinking, “That guy could take my spot. It would be nice to knock him off.” Also, he knew he killed his brother, Asahel, in battle. Now, the war is over, but Joab takes Abner out for revenge.

There’s this personal offense. There’s a concern about his personal standing, perhaps, in taking out Abner, and he does the same with Amasa. Joab has a kind of personal focus, a selfishness, a nursing of personal offenses and wanting revenge. David is the opposite of that. I mean, Shimei is throwing stones at him and cursing him, and Abishai is ready to just go take his head off, which might actually be a righteous action.

If you’re Abishai, you’re one of the mighty men. David shouldn’t say that, but it might be Abishai’s role to say, “Hey, king, should I take his head off?” That might’ve been a good thing. Then it’s David’s role to say, “No, the Lord has told him to curse me for my iniquity, because of what Nathan said. And I am trusting God to be gracious to me. Don’t take Shimei out.” Then, when he comes back, he doesn’t take him out either, but he promises, “As long as I’m king, you’re good.”

David does not take personal vengeance. He doesn’t nurse and harbor personal offense like Joab does. Joab’s actions that we see as violent, as out of place, as this manifestation of raw, manly strength without the appropriate gentleness, having a lot of personal focus, a lot of self-focus; whereas, David has a bigger heart. He includes in his joy the joy of his kingdom, the joy of others, and is able to make a wide-hearted, deeper-joy decision by getting beyond self-focus and not nursing those personal offenses.

Tabb: That’s great. Okay, final question. I’m happy for any of you to answer this. How does the life of David help you to go Godward?

Piper: He wrote a lot of psalms. I love the Psalms. They’re Godward. That’s my short answer.

Tabb: The sweet psalmist of Israel.

Piper: That’s my wife’s favorite book in the Bible. I think she’s almost right.

Mathis: Romans?

Piper: Probably. I’ve analyzed why that is for her and so many people. In Romans, you have to do a lot of thinking to get to the right application. But with the Psalms, your heart is right out there. His heart is just flowing, and that’s a wonderful thing. We need the Psalms so desperately to model an affectional relationship with God. In Romans, you have to work at it.

Greever: I think David helps me to go Godward inasmuch as he typifies Christ. Like I tried to show, I am most helped to go Godward when I refresh my soul in the gospel and what God has done for me in Christ. David helps me remember what God has done for me in Christ, both by showing those similarities between David and Jesus, but also the dissimilarities.

For instance, I didn’t mention this last night, but David did the madman routine, you know, in Gath. I can’t imagine Jesus doing that. Can you imagine Jesus, in front of Pontius Pilate, deciding the only way out right now is to pretend to be a madman? Jesus would never do the madman routine, and that just shows that Jesus is so much better than this guy who was trying to get one step ahead of Saul in the Old Testament.

I think, when I read 1 Samuel, Jesus just shines. Jesus is amazing when I read 1 Samuel, not only because of those positive examples, wherein David prefigures Christ, but also because he’s so much better than what this character is in the narrative. Inasmuch as I see that indirect route, I’m reminded of God’s kindness toward me in the Greater David.

Mathis: There is an extraordinary role that David has in Scripture. I mean, for Jesus to be the Son of David is remarkable. All the pointers, all the types, the similarities, the dissimilarities — he is pointing to Jesus more than anyone else in the Old Testament. I mean, it’s a remarkable thing. Study David’s life, and I think you get more than Moses, Abraham, and the whole list of the Old Testament celebrities.

I hesitate to say this, because my name is David. Over the years, it’s been difficult to fully appreciate David because the name is such an old hat to me. In having this conference theme and approaching it and getting ready for it, it was so helpful to see what a massive role he has in Jesus being the Son of David. So, objectively and externally, he points to Jesus, typifies Jesus, and that’s where we look to feed the joy, as we talked about.

Then, we don’t have anyone else’s inner heart laid out before God in as much detail as we have with David’s. This relates to the subjective element you’re talking about, John. He says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11), and, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1), and, “Your steadfast love is better than life” (Psalm 63:3).

The Christian Hedonistic texts that we love, one after another, are an expression of David’s heart for God, the God whom we know so far more now because of the one David typified in Jesus. There’s the external pointing to Jesus, and then there’s seeing all the internal machinations that are now all the greater because Jesus has come, because of David.

Stokes: I’d probably bounce right off of that, in part, from what I just stuck my head into the last two or three weeks. Not only does David point us to our all-satisfying God, to the enoughness of God himself for us and all that God promises to be for us in Jesus, to Jesus as our joy, to our hope in him over and over again, but then also the misery of when he’s separate from God. Those are the sin passages, where he says things like, “Your hand was heavy upon me” (Psalm 32:4).

Somehow, I feel like I want to get in line to run the race behind David. I want to go for the joy, and when I drift off the path, I want to go for the joy. When I drift off the path, I want the misery that David articulates to get back on the path and enjoy fellowship with God and his Son through the forgiveness that’s ours in Christ. We have an advocate that brings us back, and David just models that and speaks it in that little collection. I thoroughly enjoyed Psalm 51, Psalm 32, and the narrative. Joy is laced all the way through the horrible narrative, and it’s pulling him through.

ABSTRACT: While distinct and written to address different original audiences and situations, the letters of the New Testament express a united and consistent message about God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Just as the theological continuity and pairing of various letters is explicit, so too the authors who penned the letters knew one another and openly acknowledged the validity and usefulness of each other’s writings. These letters were meant to be read as a whole. By reading each one in light of the others, new riches and depths of understanding may be discovered.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Dirk Jongkind (PhD, Cambridge University), academic vice principal and senior research fellow in New Testament text and language at Tyndale House, Cambridge, to explain the theological and historical unity of the New Testament Epistles.

The apostles did not leave a legacy of essays and treatises that explain the teaching of Jesus; they left behind a corpus of letters. These letters were written by a variety of people and differ from one another in their setting, first audience, and occasion. Though there is much we do not know about how and why each of the individual letters was written, the New Testament is not silent on this matter. By looking at the historical information the letters themselves give, we can gain some valuable insights.

This essay will focus on one insight: the historical background to the unity of the apostolic teaching found in these letters. We will see how the authors related to one another, how they affirmed a universal message they taught everywhere, and why we are justified in reading the letters not just as individual writings but also as a complete unity. While many already read the letters in light of one another for canonical and theological reasons (which are valid), the historical case for reading the letters together is not always clearly stated. This essay aims to offer insight on what the New Testament itself says about how the letters came into being and why they hang together.

Let me offer one disclaimer at the outset: we will ignore the letter to the Hebrews almost completely. It is clear from Hebrews 13 that the author was familiar to the first readers, and the manuscript tradition normally incorporates Hebrews in the Pauline letters. Yet the long discussions surrounding its authorship need not distract us here.

Who Wrote the Letters?

Every letter has a writer, and it is important for recipients to know whom the letter is from. Most of the letters start off by mentioning the author’s identity. The apostle Paul always names himself at the start of his letters, the whole section from Romans to Philemon. Sometimes he mentions a coworker: Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians; Timothy in 2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Colossians; and Timothy and Silvanus in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. In each of these letters, however, the authorial voice reverts back to an individual “I,” and this singular voice is always that of Paul.

The apostle Peter also names himself in the two letters that carry his name (1 Peter 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1). Of course, Peter’s name was Simon before Jesus called him (Mark 3:16), and the Aramaic version of Peter is Cephas (John 1:42), the only designation Paul uses for Peter in 1 Corinthians (in Galatians, Paul uses both Peter and Cephas). To add to these three names, Peter introduces himself as Simeon Peter in 2 Peter, the exact form James uses in Acts 15:14.

The third apostle to write letters is John, though he never names himself in either the Gospel or any of the three letters that bear his name. Only in Revelation do we find his name (assuming it is the same author), and there not just once at the beginning of the book, but three times in the opening of the book and once towards its closing (Revelation 1:1, 4, 9; 22:8). In Revelation, it is not his own testimony he declares (John 1:14; 1 John 1:1–3); he serves as a mere servant passing on the direct words that he is told to write.

Brothers of the Lord

This leaves us with two final authors: James and Jude. There are two apostles called James: James the son of Zebedee and brother of John, and James the son of Alphaeus (Mark 3:16–18). The first of these was killed by Herod Antipas in Acts 12:2. From then on, another James continues to play a prominent role in Acts. This James is never disambiguated by the addition of an expression such as “son of X.” So, who is he? Galatians 1:19 teaches us explicitly that James the brother of the Lord was a prominent leader in the early church. Subsequently, this James did not need further introduction.

Therefore, it is reasonable to accept that the letter of James was written by the James who needed no more introduction than simply “James” — namely, the brother of Jesus. (Technically, James is of course a half-brother of Jesus, but since Scripture uses the term brother of Jesus for James, there is no need for us to be more precise.)

This also helps us identify the author of Jude. The names Jude and Judas, though distinguished in English translations, are identical in the underlying Greek. So, who is this Jude/Judas? In Jude 1, he calls himself “a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James.” This latter designation helps us identify the author. If it is sufficient to simply say that one is a brother of James, it must be the same James who needs no further introduction. Therefore, Jude modestly introduces himself as brother of James, though he could have mentioned that he is a brother of Jesus!

Of the five known authors of the New Testament letters, two turn out to be brothers of Jesus (named in Matthew 13:55), demonstrating how markedly different their attitude had become after the resurrection. Apart from James’s prominent role in Acts and in Galatians 1:19 (and also 2:9), the brothers of Jesus show up as a group somewhat unexpectedly in 1 Corinthians 9:3–5.

This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?

That Paul can mention “the brothers of the Lord” without the need to introduce them any further shows that they were well-known throughout the churches. This wide recognition of the brothers as followers of Jesus adds something to the stories in the Gospels that speak of their earlier rejection of him. Their initial unbelief (John 7:5) had been completely overturned, and the readers must have known this.

One meeting between Jesus and James is in fact mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:7, where Paul mentions that the risen Lord “appeared to James.” Why this meeting of Jesus and his brother? We can only speculate what took place and what was said. It may have had something to do with James being next in line as an heir of the promises to Abraham and David, which rested on Jesus who had died but then rose from the dead (but Scripture does not disclose anything about this).

Together in Common Cause

Three of these five authors refer to at least one of the others. Paul mentions having met James, Peter, and John on more than one occasion. He expects his audience to know about the brothers of the Lord. Peter talks about Paul’s letters and also mentions the teaching of the apostles (2 Peter 3:2), as does Jude (Jude 17). Since 1 John and the Gospel of John are so tightly related, the references in John’s Gospel to the other apostles may count as well. Only James does not mention other apostles.

Two of the authors are brothers; Peter and John had been partners even before they were called by Jesus; Paul was a regular visitor to Jerusalem. Therefore, the New Testament letters were written by people who knew one another and who, despite their diverse writings, shared a common cause.

Witness of 1 Corinthians

Of all Paul’s letters, 1 Corinthians may be the most specific, addressing situations and questions found in the church of Corinth. The letter also gives us a fascinating glimpse into the historical situations surrounding the writing of letters. For example, when we compare the movements of Paul, Apollos, Prisca and Aquila, and Timothy, it becomes clear that 1 Corinthians was written at the time described in Acts 19:22. Paul wants to return through Macedonia and Achaia and sends Timothy (1 Corinthians 4:17; 16:10) and Erastus to prepare. But rather than waiting to address the various issues in person, Paul decides to write a letter with his apostolic teaching.

Purpose and Provenance of 1 Corinthians

So, why did Paul not wait? First of all, he had received disturbing news about the church. People from the household of Chloe had told Paul about the divisions in the church (1 Corinthians 1:11). Paul uses the first four chapters to address these divisions. In 1 Corinthians 5:1, Paul addresses another problem he had heard about, but here he does not mention who brought the report. It may well be that Paul had learned about the divisions around the Lord’s Supper from Chloe’s people as well (1 Corinthians 11:18), but the text is silent about his exact source.

Second, not only had Paul received a report about the church, but he had also received a letter from the church (1 Corinthians 7:1). In this letter, the Corinthians asked Paul about his teaching on marriage and divorce, and possibly about other issues that Paul introduces with the phrase “now concerning X . . .” (see 1 Corinthians 7:25; 8:1). Paul repeats the phrase again in 1 Corinthians 12:1, but the ensuing discussion of the spiritual gifts may not have been one of the issues asked about in the letter. The close of the previous chapter suggests that at that point Paul had finished writing on the subjects he thought most necessary. “About the other things I will give directions when I come” (1 Corinthians 11:34).

The letter from Corinth to Paul must have been delivered by someone, and at the time of writing the letter three members of the Corinthian church were with Paul (1 Corinthians 16:17). This suggests that Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus were the ones who had made the trip from Corinth to Ephesus to deliver the letter and possibly even return with the answer.

Putting this all together indicates that the early church was in close contact with one another. Letters were sent; people brought reports on how the churches were doing; Christians visited one another. Churches did not live in isolation; rather, there were contacts and people traveled.

Paul’s Universal Teaching

Despite the specificity of 1 Corinthians in dealing with contextually determined problems, Paul goes to great lengths to emphasize that he is not telling the Corinthians something he does not teach elsewhere. That is, Paul wants the Corinthians to know that his instructions are the universal teaching.

He starts emphasizing this point in the opening of the letter by including the phrase “together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2). The Corinthian church is connected with the believers everywhere. Paul also presents the sending of Timothy in this light; Timothy is to remind the Corinthians of Paul’s ways in Christ, “as I teach them everywhere in every church” (1 Corinthians 4:17). Then in chapter 7, Paul mentions, “This is my rule in all the churches” (1 Corinthians 7:17). On not being contentious, Paul adds, “We have no such practice, nor do the churches of God” (1 Corinthians 11:16). In 1 Corinthians 14:33, Paul again emphasizes that what he teaches is the practice everywhere. Finally, Paul explains that he also told the churches in Galatia about “the collection for the saints” (1 Corinthians 16:1; Galatians 2:10).

Paul clearly presents his teaching as universal. This in itself provides the justification to read Paul’s letters in light of one another. If Paul thinks about his teaching as one, then it follows that one can learn about this teaching from all his letters. However, although in 1 Corinthians Paul and Timothy tell us about the unity of teaching in all the churches, there is no sense yet that the various letters would be used as a unit, and Paul does not refer explicitly to other letters he wrote.

The first encouragement to read letters written to other churches appears in Colossians 4:16, written five to ten years after 1 Corinthians. In this Prison Letter, Paul actively encourages the Colossians to read the letter to the Laodiceans and vice versa. Though this second letter has not been preserved, Paul assumes the unity of teaching and the usefulness of reading a different explanation of the same doctrine. However, part of Paul’s intention in encouraging the exchange of letters is to foster fellowship between the two churches. After all, he could have included a copy of the Laodicean letter with the one to Colossae.

Interestingly, it is in Colossians that Paul mentions the struggle he has for those who have not seen him face to face (Colossians 2:1). This struggle, combined with Paul’s imprisonment and expectation of a possible execution, may have combined in Paul’s mind to think about his letters, and perhaps even a letter collection, as a way to encourage hearts and foster rich understanding of Christ for the many people he would never visit (Colossians 2:2–3).

Witness of 2 Peter

What Paul only suggested to the Colossians comes to full realization by the time Peter writes his second letter. Peter is aware that he will soon pass away (2 Peter 1:13–14), and like Paul in Colossians, he has a burden that the believers will have full access to the truth after his death (2 Peter 1:15). And of course, this letter itself is part of the means by which Peter accomplishes this goal.

Peter and the Pauline Teaching

Toward the end of the letter, Peter makes a remark about the apparent delay of the return of Jesus. He encourages the church not to see this as a delay but rather as a sign of God’s patience, and this for salvation, which, he says, is exactly what “our beloved brother Paul also wrote” (2 Peter 3:15).

It is worthwhile to pay close attention to what Peter says in this passage.

Count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:15–16)

God entrusted Peter with opening the gospel of the kingdom to the Gentiles (Acts 15:7). This area of ministry would become Paul’s calling. From Paul’s account of his Jerusalem visit in Galatians 2:7–9, it is clear that Peter extended “the right hand of fellowship” to Paul. In 2 Peter 3, Peter makes exactly the same point. He publicly affirms Paul as an apostle and teacher of the church, as can be learned from Paul’s letters.

In addition, Peter recognizes that Paul received specific wisdom with regard to the present time between the first and second coming of the Lord. That is, Paul teaches “according to the wisdom given him,” but the message is not different from what Peter teaches. Peter uses the words “just as” (kathōs) deliberately.

Third, note the little phrase “to you” in verse 15. Peter knew that Paul had written to the same people. But who are they? The introduction to 2 Peter is not helpful in geographical terms: “To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:1). However, Peter says in 2 Peter 3:1 that this is the second letter he is writing “to you.” And that means that the addressees are the same as those of the first letter — namely, “those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1).

Paul had written to at least three churches in this wide area: the Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians (also the Laodiceans, but that letter did not become part of the corpus of Paul’s preserved letters). Among other topics, these letters cover the doctrine of justification, the teaching of the church as the body of Christ, and how the life of the believer is now hidden with Christ in God. All these topics are relevant to understanding why the ongoing patience of the Lord is to be regarded as salvation.

Fourth, in verse 16, Peter widens the scope of Paul’s letters beyond those written to his audience by saying, “as he does in all his letters.” Peter endorses Paul, wherever Paul speaks about these matters, as teaching the same message. Peter knew about these letters and clearly had access to them. Apparently, they had become a collection that could be distributed, and Peter recommends them to his audience. (Whether or not his audience already had access to all Paul’s letters is not clear.)

Furthermore, Peter was fully aware of the controversies around Paul’s teaching — “the ignorant and unstable twist” his writings and misrepresent his words. For Peter, this is not a reason to avoid Paul’s letters. Yes, Paul’s teaching is at times difficult, but Peter still endorses it because those who twist Paul’s teaching also twist the other Scriptures. Does Peter have the Old Testament in mind with the term “other Scriptures” (or “other writings”)? Possibly so. But we cannot exclude the fact that by the time Peter wrote this, other written parts of the New Testament had come into being that were regarded as falling under the category of “Scriptures.” The apostolic letters carry the authority of Jesus Christ and are therefore truly the word of God.

2 Peter Among the Epistles

Second Peter is most explicit in referring to diverse sources of divine teaching. Peter refers to the Old Testament, to the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets, and to the commandment of Jesus that came by means of the apostles (2 Peter 3:2). He mentions his first letter (2 Peter 3:1) and the letters of Paul, both to Peter’s audience and to others. He refers to events that we find recorded in the four Gospels: the transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16–18; see, e.g., Mark 9:2–8) and the announcement regarding the manner of Peter’s death (2 Peter 1:14; John 21:18–19).

Of course, Peter did not need the Gospel accounts to refer to these events as he was himself present at the time. Yet he could refer to these occasions expecting that his audience had been taught about them. In 2 Peter, we find references to a large amount of the teaching of the New Testament and a sense that this teaching is now being entrusted to writing.

There is one remaining conundrum in 2 Peter, and that is the relationship between this letter and the letter of Jude. Second Peter 2 has close parallels with Jude, citing the same illustrations in the same order. Though differences exist, the similarities suggest some sort of relationship between the two. Scholars differ as to the direction of influence (did Jude influence Peter or the other way around?). It suffices here to say that, once again, 2 Peter demonstrates how closely this letter ties in to the other apostolic writings.

Reading the Letters Together

The apostles clearly knew about one another and one another’s letters. At no point do we get a denial of the fundamental unity of their teaching. Among the earliest letters, we find Paul placing emphasis on the unity he has with the apostles in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:9) and on the unity of his teaching in all the churches, as we saw above in 1 Corinthians. In 2 Peter, one of the final letters, we see a conscious writing down and gathering together of the apostles’ teaching so that, after their death, believers would have access to the apostolic words. How then does this help us read the various letters of the New Testament in light of one another?

It is hardly necessary to explain that if we have two letters to the same church, it is good to read the second in light of what was said in the first (1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, 1 and 2 Peter). But these are not the only “paired” letters. For example, Romans and Galatians cover similar ground. In many ways, Romans expands the doctrine explained in Galatians. Even the general order of topics in Galatians 2:15–5:26 resembles that of Romans 1–8. For example, the single thought of Galatians 5:17, “to keep you from doing the things you want to do,” receives fuller expression in Romans 7:15–25.

A similar relationship exists between other letters. Though Ephesians reads as if it is less prompted by an external situation than Colossians, both frequently use similar phraseology. Colossians also has a link with the small letter to Philemon, which is still best seen as the commendation of a converted runaway slave back to his master. It is illuminating to read the private letter to Philemon in light of what Paul says about slaves and masters in the letter to the whole church at Colossae, and vice versa. We will learn more once we see and ponder the connections.

On a smaller scale, Peter teaches us to link the themes he has discussed with the teaching of Paul on the same subject. We are encouraged to compare Scripture with Scripture.

Apostolic Foundation

Scripture is ultimately the word of God, and because of the divine author behind the human authors, we should expect to find a deep underlying unity. Nothing of what we discussed above aims to take anything away from this. Yet, as he so often does, God worked out his plans and intentions through traceable historical situations. The bringing together of the correspondence of the apostles into the New Testament is an example of this. This process did not happen in some mysterious way in the long years after the death of the apostles. On the contrary, as we have seen, it was a topic clearly on their minds toward the end of their ministry.

Paul uses the image in Ephesians 2:20 of the church being “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” He includes his fellow workers in the plural noun “apostles.” John echoes this image in Revelation 21:14, where he links the foundation of the new Jerusalem with “the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Since the apostles were aware of the role and responsibility they had and acknowledge one another in their writings, we would do well to accept their combined teaching, reading each letter not just in isolation but also in light of all the teaching we have received.

Audio Transcript

We’ve been on the topic of lifelong learning and talking about your new book on the topic, Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. In it, you talk about “the excitement of learning” and mention the joy of learning hundreds of times, implying throughout that there’s joy in discovery and a joy-aim in this discipline of lifetime learning. You and I both get fired up when it comes to new discoveries we find in the Bible or in old books by dead guys. We talked about this in our episode before Thanksgiving.

But speak to someone who doesn’t feel this joy of discovery, or people who don’t think of themselves as lifelong learners. Maybe they never liked school. Maybe they didn’t get very good grades in school. They’re not wired to be lifelong students, not naturally. Maybe they’re doers, very practical, and not drawn to read hard books, to the point that even your new book on lifelong learning would be a daunting, hard sell for them. What encouragement would you give to them?

I’m reading this question and thinking, “Whom am I actually going to talk to in trying to answer this question?” They’re probably not listening. There are more than just two kinds of responses to lifelong learning. There are five, ten, twenty, hundreds of ways people respond to things like lifelong learning.

Everyone is on a continuum, from the most academically accomplished scholar on one end to the drug addict or the mentally ill person on the street outside my house that I spoke to yesterday. This person, who cannot make an ordinary conversation, has no concept of (let alone interest in) the foundations of lifelong learning. Everybody is somewhere in between those extremes. I do talk to both sides, the educated and the broken (which, maybe, is just two kinds of brokenness). I care about them. I share the gospel on the street. I pray for them. I pray with them. I try to connect them with sources of help for their mental condition, their economic condition, their housing condition, their physical condition, their spiritual condition.

Probably neither of those ends of the spectrum is listening to this podcast. That’s why I’m thinking, “Whom am I going to talk to when I answer Tony’s question?” Realistically, you haven’t asked a stupid question. I know the kinds of people that you’re talking about.

Averse to Learning

Maybe the most realistic audience is ordinary members of our churches who graduated from high school. They were glad to get out. Maybe they did trade school, professional school, an apprenticeship, or some college. Maybe they even graduated from college because their parents wanted them to, and now they are glad to be done. Maybe some of them are not readers at all. They may be dyslexic.

I know people like that. They function just fine in their jobs. They find a way to make it work. They might have ADD but have learned to live productively with it. They simply do not approach the world as a place you’d want to squeeze meaning out of. Well, that’s the way I feel about the world — squeeze some meaning out of this experience today; dig up discoveries.

Many just don’t think that way. They’re mainly passive in the way the world comes at them. They deal with it when it comes. They do what they have to do. They don’t see problems as a puzzle to solve or as an exciting challenge, wrestling their way to some new solution and greater understanding. When they think of learning, it’s basically just figuring out what the next thing is that needs to be done.

“God may show you a way to grow in knowledge and grace that is totally surprising and totally enjoyable to you.”

They read instructions, or they may go to YouTube instead, to watch someone else do it. Maybe they try a new recipe. That’s what they do to learn: get a new fishing lure or find an apartment. Life is not for learning; it’s for living. I get that. I know some of these folks. I think a person with that kind of disposition can lead a God-honoring, people-loving life.

What would I say to them about lifelong learning? I think what I should try to do is relay what the Bible says about growth in words and terms that are not connected to school, academics, study, or even reading.

Grow in Grace and Knowledge

Let’s assume that you do not resonate with the phrase “the joy of learning.” It may be that when you say, “I don’t find joy in learning,” what you may mean is this: “I don’t find joy in the process of thinking, or the process of intentional study, or the process of reading, or the process of focused observation, or the process of pushing the mind, exerting the mind, in some endeavor.” What feels off-putting is not so much the discovery of something wonderful, but the discipline or process of study and reading and analysis and mental exertion.

If you’re a Christian, I assume there are things about God, Christ, and salvation that are precious to you. You know them, you hold fast to them, and they are a help in daily life. If someone could add another one of those wonderfully precious truths to what you already have, if somebody could add another truth about God or salvation that made you happy because it was such good news, you’d be glad. You wouldn’t say, “Oh, I don’t want any more good news. I don’t want to be happier than I am now.” Nobody says that.

It’s not the happy outcomes of lifelong learning but the process that leaves you cold. Study, reading, thinking, analyzing, mental effort — all these feel so contrary to your personality. It would be a huge thing to recognize that you and I both love many of the outcomes of lifelong learning.

We should linger here for just a minute. When Peter says that we should grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus, it’s a command (2 Peter 3:18). He said that we should grow, though he doesn’t specify how. If a person says to me, “I don’t really want to grow, I don’t want to know more about Jesus, and I don’t want to experience more grace,” then I would say we’re dealing with a problem of disobedience, not a problem of neutral personality issues. That’s a defect of love, not a personality trait.

So, I am assuming that our non-lover of the process of learning would love to know more about Jesus, would love to have wonderful things about Christ feeding his mind that he doesn’t yet understand, would love to taste and enjoy and experience more of God’s grace and goodness in Christ.

These people hear the call to grow, and they hear the prayer of Paul that we should increase in the knowledge of God (Colossians 1:9–10). They hear Hosea’s warning that people perish for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). That’s why he says later, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). They hear all this, and they want this fruit. They want the outcome. They want these results. They realize that not to want them is a lack of love for Jesus.

Pave the Way with Prayer

I would say to them that if study and reading and lifelong learning is not the path, then pray earnestly that God would show you what the path is for you, for your particular personality and your way. You may be surprised how he answers.

For sure he will say this: “Get in a good church, and sit under the preaching of God’s word.” I know he’ll say that. That’s in the Bible. Everybody should do that. Every Christian should be in a good church. If they can, they should be in a small group of believers who pray for each other and share thoughts about what they’ve seen in the Bible.

God may show you a way to grow in knowledge and grace that is totally surprising and totally enjoyable to you. Don’t stop praying until he does. Don’t pray for a week and then say, “Well, nothing happened.” No, pray for a year, two, three. Pray as long as you need to in order to obey the command to grow.

Find your way to grow, to go forward. If you’re not going forward, you’re going to go backward. That’s the way it is. We’re not in a pond; we’re in a river, and it’s flowing the wrong direction. If we don’t swim forward, we’re going backward.

Leave Room for Surprise

Here’s one last thought. I hated to read until I was in the eleventh grade. It was really, really undesirable. I remember in the sixth grade how I had to put a sticker on the board in front of the class to show how many pages I had read. I would look for the books with pictures. Then something happened. After the eleventh grade, I loved it (though I am a very slow reader).

I know a man who barely finished high school. His grades were so bad. Reading was torture. He went into the army, and when he came out two years later, something had changed. He applied to Bible college on his own and put himself all the way through.

“What was once boring can suddenly, and for no apparent reason, become a lifelong passion.”

Here’s the last illustration. I was having breakfast with a friend recently, and he told me about his son who almost dropped out of high school. He finished, but for several years he worked a minimum-wage job. Then he got married to a good woman, and this woman, to use his phrase, “kicked him in the behind.” He applied to design school because she kicked him in the behind, and he finished design school. Today he designs visuals for companies all over the world.

Now, if you would ask me, “What happened? What happened in all those instances, including yours?” I’d say, “I don’t know what happened. God just brought something into our lives. It was time something changed, and things changed.” What was once boring can suddenly, and for no apparent reason, become a lifelong passion. It happened to me. It might happen to you. Don’t be a fatalist. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. You might be surprised.

All the shine of a thousand spotlights,All the stars we steal from the night sky,Will never be enough,Never be enough.Towers of gold are still too little;These hands could hold the world but it’llNever be enough,Never be enough.

—Loren Allred, The Greatest Showman

The world is too small to fill your heart. The best things that time can give you will leave unfathomed depths in your soul. It is a beautiful truth that you were made for eternity.

This is the perspective of “the Preacher” in Ecclesiastes, who spoke these famous words: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

In a nutshell, I think the Preacher is saying this: The longing we each possess for a coherence to our own story — and, indeed, the story of the world — has been graciously gifted to us by God. And part of the grace is the surprise that this longing takes the form of a pained looking, a perplexed pondering, as we try to — and then realize we cannot — join up all the dots of our own and the world’s stories. We long for more than we have, we long for what is transient to last, and we long for people and relationships that are temporal to abide forever.

This God-given desire for an uninterrupted, big-picture understanding of everything rubs against the piecemeal, fragmented nature of our grasp on reality. We have a sense that we were made for a grander and more perfect story than the one being played out in our brutal experience of the world.

Time Meets Eternity

This interpretation of Ecclesiastes 3:11 emerges when we attend to the verse’s parts, reading them in the context of the chapter in which they are embedded. Observe how the poetic phrase about eternity in the middle is bracketed on either side by references to time: the beauty of things in their right time and the language of beginning and end.

The juxtaposition of time and eternity is more than a difference; it is a tension, as seen in the words “yet so that he cannot.” There is something about the interplay of temporal affairs and eternity that creates a jagged edge in human experience.

This tension is borne out when we consider the whole chapter. Ecclesiastes 3 is famous for the lyrical tilt of its poetry: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die” (verses 1–2). There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh” (verse 4). There is “a time to love, and a time to hate” (verse 8).

We’re meant to realize that there is no predictability to the arrival of these events, and often, their presence takes us by surprise. We live with life’s ugliness and pain as much as its beauty and delight, and we are not in charge of when, where, and to what extent each enters our lives.

These seasons are also nearly all relational. They involve the people whom we love and lose, those whom we wrong and forgive, our companions and our enemies. The ebb and flow of our lives is largely taken up with piloting the different seasons of these relationships and the effects they have on us.

The point about time is this: we cannot control it. We cannot control events, and we cannot control relationships. The rest of Ecclesiastes 3 makes clear that we also cannot control ultimate outcomes: “Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness” (verse 16).

This is why we “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (verse 11). We simply do not know the end from the beginning of anything. We are bit-part players on the sprawling epic of world history, stumbling over our own lines, never mind understanding how this scene on Tuesday morning coheres with a chapter three years ago or the episode that will take place twelve years from now.

The absence of that big picture — particularly if there is injustice and wickedness to be endured or suffering to be stewarded in the meantime — can be one of the most bewildering features of our pilgrimage.

Every Heart a Stable

But now observe the rose among the thorns, the middle of verse 11: “[God] has put eternity into man’s heart.” The idea that God has placed something more than this world (eternity) inside an object in this world (man’s heart) is amazing and powerfully poetic. In The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis has Tirian, the last king of Narnia, and his party enter a stable, which is the threshold of death itself. On entering, they discover that all is not as it seems.

“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling to himself, “that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places.”

“Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “Its inside is bigger than its outside.”

“Yes,” said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” (744)

That something finite could hold something infinite — this is in keeping with who God is and what he gives. From the fullness of his own immensity, he sought to bestow vastness on small creatures. He intended an experience of infinite bliss to be savored by finite beings. Eternal life for humankind, in the unending Sabbath-rest of the Creator God, was possible from the very beginning of creation.

Our first parents squandered it in an attempted coup, their vandalism of shalom (Genesis 3:22). Yet its loss does not mean its impossibility; rather, it means that we, in our fallen human nature, experience the echoes of who and what we were made to be. This capacity for eternity and its infinite depths keeps sounding in our hearts, in both major and minor keys.

Minor-Key Echoes

In minor key, consider the horror of death. Eternity echoes in our grief. Why is it that we find the idea of the total and absolute nonbeing of our loved ones intolerable, such sorrow unbearable? Christian and non-Christian alike have a sense of, and a yearning for, the person’s existence to continue in some form, in some way, however vague and uncertain. This longing for uninterrupted and durable relationships, for reunion, for wholeness, for completeness and perfection — ultimately, for a share in the life of God — is what it feels like for God to set eternity in our hearts.

God has placed it there as an invitation to humility. As John Jarick puts it, “The human being . . . wants to pass beyond his fragmentary knowledge and discern the fuller meaning of the whole pattern — but the Creator will not let the creature be his equal” (quoted in Tremper Longman, Ecclesiastes, 121). Instead of trying to rise above our station and know what only God can know (the beginning and the end), Ecclesiastes 3:11 reminds us that God is not bound by the changing times in the ways that we are.

The times happen to us, but God happens to the times. He sees and knows what we cannot; he is the one in charge of the ultimate coherence of all things. It is part of the Preacher’s invitation, as Derek Kidner comments, “to see perpetual change not as something unsettling but as an unfolding pattern, scintillating and God-given. The trouble for us is not that life refuses to keep still, but that we see only a fraction of its movement and of its subtle, intricate design” (Message of Ecclesiastes, 38–39).

No one would open The Lord of the Rings to a random page two-thirds of the way through and conclude, after a few minutes of reading, that it had no point, that it was incoherent. Why do we feel so confident interpreting our own times in this way, when in fact the story is still being written by the divine Author?

We are actors, not the Playwright. We are not his equal.

Major-Key Servants

The eternity in our hearts breaks through in other ways. There is a major key as well. The world we recognize so well in Ecclesiastes 3:16 is followed by a depiction of the world we long for so passionately: “I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work” (verse 17).

Judgment is a divine promise. All the events of human history that have slipped through the hourglass of time into the past might be lost to us, but they are never lost to God. One day he will pull the past into his present to bring it to account. Every sorrow, every injustice, every unanswered grievance will have its day in court.

Even more, such longing for the beauty of coherence, or for the rightness of justice exactly meted out for wickedness, is a pointer to the eternal perfection of life with God. Lewis expresses this powerfully:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. (Mere Christianity, 136–37)

Perhaps his most beautiful expression of this idea comes from “The Weight of Glory,” where he manages the rare feat of analyzing an emotion (nostalgia) in a way that makes the emotion more beautiful after the analysis than it was before. He describes nostalgia as the bittersweet, special emotion of longing, observing that only the emotionally immature believe that what they are longing for is actually what they are longing for.

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; for it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a far country we have not yet visited. (30–31)

Is it not true that we often treat the best and most beautiful things we have as ends in themselves? In fact, they are messengers, servants of eternity in time-bound form, sent to us from God with an invitation to see through them to the One who gave them and who made us for him. They are images, shadows, and dreams. They are too small to satisfy us. They are passing. We were made for eternity.

Few saw as much as Peter did.

One of the first disciples, and chief among them, he heard Jesus’s public teaching, and his private explanations. He saw Jesus heal, raise the dead, and feed thousands with a few loaves and fish. He walked Galilee with Jesus, on land and sea.

Along with James and John, Peter witnessed the transfiguration, and accompanied Jesus deep into Gethsemane to pray on the night before he died. Then, watching from a distance on Good Friday, Peter saw what Jesus did, and did not do. Jesus’s enemies mocked him, slandered him, insulted him, maligned him, reviled him — as verbal thrusts of contempt conspired with nails and spear.

How Jesus handled it left an indelible stamp on Peter. And it came to mark his letter to insulted, maligned Christians, tempted to respond in kind to their revilers. In short, “When [Jesus] was reviled, he did not revile in return” (1 Peter 2:23).

Mindful of God

The holy composure that Jesus showed when mistreated, and while dying in agony, was not only truly divine, but like Christ himself, fully human.

“Not reviling in return” didn’t just happen. This is not how humanity naturally responds when verbally attacked. No, for years Jesus prepared for it. He trained his soul for these trials. Through rhythms of communion with his Father and compassion for immature sheep, through seasons of prayer and ceaselessly rehearsing what “is written” in Scripture, through shaping his own pliable human soul with habits of Godward praise and glad obedience, Jesus had long readied himself for the gauntlet of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Christ was not caught off guard when they first flogged him with words. Jesus knew that mocking would come, and warned his men of it ahead of time. He would be “mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon” (Luke 18:32). “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be . . . mocked and flogged and crucified” (Matthew 20:18–19; also Mark 10:34). Not only flogging and crucifixion, but also mocking would be a genuine trial, requiring his readiness.

How did he prepare for the onslaught? In the words of his watching disciple, Jesus entrusted himself “to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). He lived “mindful of God” (1 Peter 2:19), not just fellow man. He readied himself for the assault of spoken and acted evil by becoming the kind of man who would not respond in kind.

Mocked and Maligned

Preparation was one thing. Many are willing to talk theory. But when mocking words begin to fly, they often sting and disorient far more than anticipated. After his arrest,

the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him. (Luke 22:63–65)

They shuffled him off to the puppet king Herod, who “with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him” (Luke 23:11). Then back to Pilate, and Mark reports in more detail what shape the mocking took: they clothed him in purple, put a crown of thorns on him, and saluted him in jest, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spit on him, and knelt down in sneering homage (Mark 15:17–19; also Matthew 27:28–31). Once they had nailed him to the cross, the soldiers came by for another round; they “mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine” (Luke 23:36).

Now that he seemed safely affixed to the cross, his own countrymen unleashed the barrage they had waiting. Passersby “derided him, wagging their heads” (Matthew 27:39). Even as he writhed in agony, and public humiliation, they taunted him: “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!” “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40).

Even the dignitaries of Israel could not hold their tongues but descended into the same cowardly insults: “He saved others; he cannot save himself.” “He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him” (Matthew 27:42). “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him” (Matthew 27:43). Never one to exaggerate, Luke simply reports that “the rulers scoffed at him” (Luke 23:35).

Even the two criminals crucified to his left and right “reviled him in the same way” (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32).

Reviled, Keep Trusting

How, then, did Jesus respond?

Clearly, he was capable of putting it all right back in their face with some perfectly crafted reply. No one had a way with words like Jesus. When he chose to speak, even foes confessed that “no one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46). None could silence the proud with one simple word like Jesus. Yet hear it from eyewitness testimony: “When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).

Jesus had cultivated a life of trust in his Father. He was ever “mindful of God.” Then, even when the thrusts of reviling and mocking came, he did not let the hurt pierce his heart, and he did not respond to evil with evil. Instead, he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Mindful of his Father, he could trust that justice would come in due time, and at least in this moment, it was not his own to enact. The wicked words of man would not unseat his own obedience to God. If we only had such wherewithal today.

This, of course, was not raw willpower, without joy. When pummeled by spoken contempt, Jesus would not fail to practice what he had preached: “Rejoice and be glad . . . when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you” (Matthew 5:11–12). He was a man of sorrows, but not joyless. In the whole horrible enterprise, says Hebrews 12:2, Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him.”

Joy does not mean fun. There was nothing fun about the odium and shame of the cross, nor its nails, nor its blasphemies. Nor was it without the deep joy that could sustain him.

Gethsemane and Golgotha were not yet the time, but they prepared the way. The day would come to “leap for joy” (Luke 6:23). Which leads to Peter’s emphasis on what Jesus did not do.

Do Not Respond in Kind

Jesus did not descend into the very sin that had been sinned against him. He did not give in to evil by repeating it. “He did not revile in return” (1 Peter 2:23).

On such authority, Peter says to his embattled readers, “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling” (1 Peter 3:9). No matter what terrible evil has been uttered against you, keep your tongue from speaking evil (1 Peter 3:10). Have you been slandered? “Put away . . . all slander” (1 Peter 2:1). The kingdom-disqualifying sins of others, including reviling (1 Corinthians 5:11; 6:9–10), are no excuse to give ourselves to sin. Would you too go to hell because the hell-bound scoff at you?

On the one hand, Peter should not have been surprised to see Jesus’s response to reviling. This very concept of not responding in kind had been one of the hallmarks of Christ’s teaching. Turn the other cheek. Go another mile. Give him your cloak as well. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Still, Peter marveled to see the Christian ethic in its first and greatest act. It’s one thing to hear of a miracle; another to see it for yourself. And he would see still more.

Bless Your Revilers

Remarkably, Jesus didn’t stop at holding his tongue, magnificent as that was. He spoke blessing, rather than curse. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Human, he could find the impulse to respond in kind. But holy, he acted the miracle of not reviling in return, and then went even further. The joy that led him not to respond in kind held his peace and filled his mouth with words of blessing for his foes.

So Peter writes, “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless” (1 Peter 3:9). Who would dare venture such an ethic without the teaching and example of Christ? Christians are constrained not to silence, but to righteousness. Peter would have us be ready, in fact, to speak with grace and truth: “Always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” And however well-meaning or slanderous their talk, do so “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).

Paul also got the message, and gave it: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. . . . Repay no one evil for evil” (Romans 12:14, 17).

Blessed and Vindicated

In the end, Jesus not only blessed but he was blessed.

God did not leave him in utter humiliation, but exalted him. He did not abandon him to the tomb, but raised him. God counted to three, and fully vindicated Jesus with resurrection life, then counted to forty, and raised him up to heaven, and then seated him on heaven’s very throne. And in his threefold rising, Jesus looked in triumph over his enemies and saw them put to shame.

So too, “you will be blessed,” writes Peter (1 Peter 3:14). In fact, you already have a down payment: “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Peter 4:14). True, insults will not first strike us as blessings. But then, like Jesus, we go to work on them by the Spirit, mindful of God. With the calculus of heaven, which is never flippant, but ever earnest, we learn to live what Jesus taught and realized:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. (Matthew 5:11–12; also Luke 6:22)

When mocked, maligned, reviled, we follow in Jesus’s steps (1 Peter 2:21). In him, we do not sin in response to sin. And one day soon, if not already in this life, the folly of our revilers will be exposed. “When you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame” (1 Peter 3:16).

When Reviled, We Bless

Make no mistake, we do not take reviling lightly. We do not celebrate opposition to Jesus, in and of itself. And true reviling is unavoidably painful. We don’t seek it, try to provoke it, or enjoy it. Not eager for it, yet we are willing for Jesus’s sake to endure it — when it comes.

In times when talk is cheap and unbelievers are prone to take aim, we look to our Lord, admire his magnanimity, and, when attacked, we seek to walk in his steps.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:12, “When reviled, we bless.”

I count this a great honor and joy to speak to you about the man I was named after, even though I haven’t always loved it. David is a fairly common name in my generation; sometimes I wished for something more distinctive. But as I’ve aged, I’ve grown to appreciate that first David. He has his clear failures, and yet he is such a compelling and genuinely good king and man. And it’s his manhood we’ll focus on in this session — not humanity, but masculinity.

To encounter the life of David some three thousand years later can be a challenge for modern men. We might find in it a call to cultivate some reasonable Davidic strength of body and soul. Whether as king or father or husband or friend, our people don’t want men with limp wrists, but with strong arms. Yet not with strong arms alone, as we’ll see.

Expert at War?

Perhaps one reason I haven’t always thrilled at being named David is that I long misunderstood him. Maybe I didn’t realize that David and Goliath were not to scale on the felt boards and as pictured in children’s books. At least well into adulthood, I had a pretty one-dimensional and domesticated idea of David.

I thought of him as the shepherd who became king and “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). And so he was. Of course, we all know David killed Goliath as a youth, but I assumed that came from one lucky shot, rather than any skill in battle or as any reflection of his manhood. I didn’t think of David as particularly masculine. (It may also betray my mistaken idea of shepherds, who I thought to be more like mothers than warriors. Only later did I realize those guys carried a rod and staff, both to protect the sheep and to strike wolves. Ancient shepherds had to be fighters, not just feeders.)

But a specific scene near the end of David’s reign began to pop that bubble for me and give me a glimpse into the masculinity of David, and see him as more than just the singer-songwriter.

In 2 Samuel 17, when David’s son Absalom has rebelled against his father, marched on Jerusalem, and sent David retreating, David’s loyal friend Hushai pretends to have swapped sides to Absalom in order to defeat the rebel counsel. As Hushai makes his case, which ends up carrying the day, he characterizes David in terms that all the wise men of the day agreed with. Hushai says to Absalom,

You know that your father and his men are mighty men, and that they are enraged, like a bear robbed of her cubs in the field. Besides, your father is expert in war. (2 Samuel 17:8)

Not just his men, but David himself is mighty — and David in particular is expert in war.

Man of Valor, Man of War

In fact, the first time Scripture speaks of David, even before the Goliath account, he is introduced by one of Saul’s servants not only as “skillful in playing” but as “a man of valor, a man of war” and “a man of good presence.”

Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him. (1 Samuel 16:18)

In the following chapter, we learn that David, though still a youth, has already killed lions and bears (1 Samuel 17:34–36).1 And based on such preparation, and his faith in God’s help, David has the courage to step forward and face Goliath. Though he does not intend to fight Goliath hand to hand, he will engage him in personal battle as a projectile warrior, putting his own life at stake if he is unable to land the death blow.2 And once David has struck him, this youth is at least strong enough to draw Goliath’s massive sword from its sheath and cut through his giant neck to take off his head (1 Samuel 17:51).

Soon the imposing Saul, Israel’s lead warrior, who stood head and shoulders above the rest, hears women dancing in the streets, singing of the strength they see in David: “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7; 21:11; 29:5).

And this David does not stay a youth but grows up to be a fierce warrior. So, Saul sets David over the men of war. And to win Saul’s daughter as his bride, David brings the king two hundred Philistine foreskins. Later we hear of David leading thirty thousand warriors in battle (2 Samuel 6:1) and being victorious wherever he goes (2 Samuel 8:6). At the end of his life, the reason God gives for why David will not be the one to build the temple is that he is “a man of war” (1 Chronicles 28:3; also 22:8).3

What Made David Great?

Then comes Psalm 18, which appears in 2 Samuel 22 at the end of David’s life as a celebration of God’s deliverance from all his enemies. The psalm represents the physical strength and skill that God gave to David:

He “can run against a troop,” he says, and “leap over a wall” (verse 29).
He writes that God “equipped me with strength” (verse 32) and “made my feet like the feet of a deer” (verse 33).
God “[trained] my hands for war,” he adds, making his arms strong enough to “bend a bow of bronze” (verse 34).

David, it seems, is a physical specimen and all-around warrior: He runs with speed and agility. He can climb and leap. His arms are strong enough to wield weapons, and his hands have been trained, over long years, in the skills of battle.

Yet right here, in Psalm 18, as he celebrates God’s good provision of physical, manly prowess, David makes a striking claim in verse 35. This takes David’s manhood to a new level, and surpasses the glory of slaying a giant in his youth. He says to God in 2 Samuel 22:36 (and Psalm 18:35), “Your gentleness made me great.”

Physical strength and skill, with proven valor and combat experience, may have made David “expert at war,” but that’s not what made him great. These are good things: strong arms, quick feet, skilled hands, military triumph. But those physical manifestations of manliness are not what made him great, he says. It was God’s gentleness that made David great.

What does it mean that God’s gentleness made him great? We might understand this in two ways. One, God had been gentle with David. David had flaws, many failures and sins. God could have rejected him and cut him off from the throne at any point. Yet God was gentle with him; he was gracious with him. David did not deserve it, and God was not exacting with his anointed, but gentle with him.

While that’s true, I think David is saying even more here. Not only had the omnipotent God been gentle with David, but God’s own gentleness with David had changed David. God’s own gentleness had come to take root in David’s heart and characterize his own life and leadership. As he came to the throne and wielded the powers of kingship, he did so with gentleness. David has been gentle with others.4

But this is such a quick and passing statement in Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22. How might we increase our confidence that we’re reading David correctly? How might we confirm that his own self-understanding of what made him great was not his manly physique and martial abilities but his godly gentleness?

Several key episodes in the life of David accent his gentleness, tenderness, or grace as greatness, not tragic flaw.

Saul and Nabal

First, at the end of 1 Samuel, David exercises a form of Godlike gentleness even before becoming king.

The second half of 1 Samuel chronicles his journey into the wilderness to elude Saul’s desire to kill him. In chapter 24 and then again in chapter 26, David happens upon a vulnerable Saul and could have ended Saul’s life violently. Yet David (himself God’s anointed, 1 Samuel 16:12–13) chooses not to reach out his hand against God’s anointed to seize the kingdom (1 Samuel 24:6, 10; 26:9, 11, 23; 2 Samuel 1:14, 16). Rather, he waits for years on end for the kingship to fall to him. Trusting in God and his timing, in manly humility and the godly gentleness that flows from it, David lets Saul go.

Right in the middle of those two accounts, in chapter 25, David almost avenges himself. A fool named Nabal insults him. The warrior-prince reacts in a very natural way: he tells his men to strap on their swords. But then a wise woman, Nabal’s own wife, Abigail, intervenes, and pleads for David to be gentle — and be the bigger man. Rather than stretch out his own hand to avenge himself, David deals gently with the fool, whom God strikes down just ten days later.

“Gentleness is not the absence of strength but the addition of Christlike grace to cushion power to life-giving ends.”

Later, after Saul’s death, David takes initiative to show kindness to the house of Saul (2 Samuel 9:1, 9), which (similar to gentleness) he calls “the kindness of God” (verse 3). In time, he will show such kindness and gentleness to Amnon and to Shimei, and even to his ruthless and severe cousins Joab and Abishai. It’s a striking pattern in David’s life once you see it. David, for his flaws, is serious about his own sin, and he, wielding the power of the kingship, is gentle with others in their sin and failures.

So, we have some reason to see his godly gentleness as what made him great. But we haven’t yet mentioned the two clearest and most important places, both in David’s own words in 2 Samuel and both set in opposition to his cousin and commander of the army, Joab, who serves as a masculine foil for seeing the greatness of David.

Gentle with an Enemy

First, in chapter 3, after the death of Saul, Joab avenges in peacetime the death of his brother Asahel in wartime.

Saul’s commander Abner had struck down Asahel as he pursued Abner in battle. Abner warned him to turn aside, but Asahel would not, so Abner struck him through in the stomach. In time, Abner sought peace with David and delivered the rest of the kingdom to him. David and Abner feasted together, and David sent him away in peace.

However, Joab heard of it and drew Abner aside, under the pretense of peace, “to speak with him privately, and there he struck him in the stomach [revenge], so that he died, for the blood of Asahel his brother” (2 Samuel 3:27).

Here a contrast begins to emerge between David and Joab. Both can be fearsome in battle. Both are strong, brave, experts at war, mighty men. But Joab, while an asset in war, is a liability in peace. It is great to have Joab on your side in the wilderness, and it could be terrible to have him nearby in the city.

Joab’s unrighteous slaughter of Abner, Saul’s former commander, now threatens the consolidation of the nation under David’s rule. So David takes public action in mourning the death of Abner, so that “all the people and all Israel understood that day that it had not been the king’s will to put to death Abner” (2 Samuel 3:37). David then speaks to his servants to make clear the difference between himself and Joab, the son of Zeruiah:

Do you not know that a prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel? And I was gentle today, though anointed king. These men, the sons of Zeruiah, are more severe than I. The Lord repay the evildoer according to his wickedness! (2 Samuel 3:38–39)5

“Sons of Zeruiah” refers to Joab and his other brother, Abishai. They are manifestly manly men; they are men of war, oozing with testosterone. Second Samuel 10:11–12 shows us Joab and Abishai at their best. The Syrians and Ammonites have surrounded them in the front and the rear. So, Joab says to Abishai,

If the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come and help you. Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.

Glorious. What great assets in battle. But then, as we’ll continue to see, what great liabilities at home.

You Sons of Zeruiah

For instance, when David is retreating from Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 16, a man named Shimei, from the extended family of Saul, comes out and curses David and throws stones at him and his mighty men as they walk. Abishai speaks up: “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and take off his head” (verse 9). To this David replies, “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? . . . Behold, my own son seeks my life; how much more now may this Benjaminite! Leave him alone, and let him curse” (verses 10–11).

Once Absalom is dead, and David returns to the city, Shimei comes cowering on his knees, begging,

Let not my lord hold me guilty or remember how your servant did wrong on the day my lord the king left Jerusalem. Do not let the king take it to heart. For your servant knows that I have sinned. Therefore, behold, I have come this day, the first of all the house of Joseph to come down to meet my lord the king. (2 Samuel 19:19–20)

Abishai speaks up again: “Shall not Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the Lord’s anointed?” Again, David will be the bigger man. This is becoming a refrain: “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah, that you should this day be as an adversary to me? Shall anyone be put to death in Israel this day?” (verses 21–22).

The refrain “you sons of Zeruiah” reflects David becoming exasperated with Joab’s and Abishai’s unbending severity and violence and inability to restrain their strength and aggression. They are great to have on your side in war, and they do not know how to control their strength.

Which leads to David’s other mention of gentleness, leading up to chapter 22.

Gentle with a Traitor

In chapter 18, Absalom has rebelled against him, Hushai has bought him time, and now David sends Joab and the army into battle. In keeping with his pattern of exercising strength and adding to it the virtue of gentleness, David orders Joab, in the presence of witnesses, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom” (2 Samuel 18:5).

Some commentators see weakness and indiscretion in David at this point. However, others see the gentleness that made him great.6 Remember, David is sending out his army. Peter Leithart defends David’s directions to Joab:

These instructions were consistent with David’s treatment of all his enemies; he had treated Saul well, and just recently he had restrained Abishai from cutting down Shimei. He knew what Joab was capable of, and he wanted all his men to know that he treated enemies with kindness and compassion. David’s behavior again provided an Old Testament illustration of Jesus’s teaching about loving enemies.7

Joab, of course, defies David’s will and himself thrusts three javelins through the heart of Absalom, again accenting the difference between David and Joab. Both are strong, but only one is great. Both are warriors, but only one knows the moment when, and has the ability, to exercise gentleness.

Joab Versus David

Joab is the one-dimensional man of war — strong, tenacious, courageous in battle, willing to risk it all. Yet he is a caricature of mature masculinity, not the full expression. He can fight, but he is unable to curb his aggression when it is no longer called for. He is tough, but he is unable to cushion his strength or control his tenacity when wisdom calls for gentleness.

And a growing number in the manosphere today eagerly offer their counsel on how to be more like Joab. In many circles (some clearly unbelieving but others under the banner of Christ), voices advocate, in essence, for men to rebel against feminizing in our world, and the church, by being more like Joab: “Society has made you soft; now it’s time to man up” — and the vision ends up being little more than a caricature of manly strength and backbone. They seem to see the pendulum swing to Joab as the necessary reaction.

But brothers, Joab and effeminacy aren’t the only options. David, man of war and giant slayer that he is, offers us the more mature vision of manhood. And note well, David is not a mean between the two extremes, but one who is every bit as manly as Joab — and then, with added abilities, even more so.

In terms of strength, speed, skill with a weapon, and ability to strategize and conquer in battle, we should not assume that Joab has much, if anything, on David, the giant slayer. David is every bit the man of war Joab is, but David surpasses Joab as a man not by being more severe, but by adding to his manly strength the virtue of manly gentleness. David is the bigger man and better model. David had learned gentleness from God himself, and so David can thrive in all contexts, not just in battle. He does not have less strength than Joab, but more.

David’s abilities are multidimensional. Both strong and gentle, he can wield his strength when the moment calls for it, or with admirable restraint he can walk in gentleness. David can lead a nation, not just an army.

And David, not Joab, is the Lord’s anointed, and the man who is the type of the Anointed One to come.

High and Exalted, Gentle and Lowly

While Psalm 18 serves as a great tribute to God’s work in and through David, there is much in the psalm, writes John Calvin in his commentary, that “agrees better with Christ” than with David.

And when the apostle John, on the isle of Patmos, caught his glimpses of the glory of Christ, he too saw the exemplar of mature masculinity, strong and gentle, capable and compassionate. In Jesus he saw not only man but “the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8). He turned to hear a voice “like the roar of many waters,” and “from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength” (Revelation 1:15–16). Later John would see this Lion of a man, sitting on a white horse, as the one who “judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11).

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. (Revelation 19:15)

This is the one who is introduced in heaven with regal dignity and sovereign power: “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered” (Revelation 5:5).

Yet when the apostle looked between the angels and the throne of heaven, he “saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). A lamb-like Lion, and lion-like Lamb, awe-inspiring in his majestic strength, and seen to be truly great as the gentle and lowly, self-sacrificial, atoning Lamb of God.

To be clear, the risen Christ is not puny. He sits in power on the very throne of the universe, and all authority in heaven and on earth is his. He is not weak in the least. And in masculine glory, his gentleness cushions the application of his great power as he marshals it in the service of his weak people. Brothers and sisters, do not mistake his gentleness for weakness. Gentleness is not the absence of strength but the addition of Christlike grace to cushion power to life-giving ends.

The greatness of David is not that he slew the giant in his youth. The greatness of David is that as a man he slew the giants in his own warrior’s heart: arrogance and pride, selfishness, unrighteous anger, petty disputes, personal offenses, private comforts and preferences and luxuries.

David was the great king, and the type of the Anointed One to come, as a man who was not weak, but strong, brave, and more — he was kind, patient, and gentle. He did not reach out his hand to seize power, but he waited on his appointment and traveled the long path of self-humbling on the way to being exalted. Nor, once in power, did he always leverage his full force, but learning from God’s own gentleness with him, he learned how and when to be gentle with others.

Part 7 Episode 164 When humans exchange the glory of God for disordered sexual desires, the consequences are profound. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Romans 1:24–28 to show the relationship between God’s judgment and homosexuality.

God’s Judgment and Homosexuality
When humans exchange the glory of God for disordered sexual desires, the consequences are profound. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Romans 1:24–28 to show the relationship between God’s judgment and homosexuality.