ABSTRACT: In Paul’s list of qualities for older women to teach younger women, he includes oikourgous, which the ESV translates as “working at home” (Titus 2:5). This Greek word appears only here in the New Testament, calling for a careful look at the cultural and biblical contexts. Culturally, the Pastoral Epistles reveal prominent false teachings circulating among the Ephesian and Cretan churches — teachings Paul sought to oppose, in part, with lists of Christian virtues like the one in Titus 2. Biblically, both the Pastoral Epistles and the broader scriptural context give shape and definition to a woman’s “working at home.” While Paul does not limit women to working only at home, he does call wives and mothers to give sufficient attention to their husbands and children, and to beware any teaching or ambition that causes them to follow some first-century women in neglecting their families.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Bill Mounce (PhD, Aberdeen University), founder and president of BiblicalTraining.org, to interpret and apply oikourgous(“working at home”) in Titus 2:5.

One of the challenges of biblical exegesis is transitioning from what a passage meant in its original setting to what it now means in our current cultural context. This is why exegesis is a multistep process. We start with what a passage says, try to determine what it meant then, and then see how that meaning comes into our own context.

No statement is totally cultural. No statement has meaning in one context and no meaning in another. No statement in Scripture can be tossed aside as irrelevant. The eternal meaning may be dressed in cultural garb and therefore difficult to understand, but our task is to find that meaning and bring it faithfully into today.

The Pastoral Epistles — 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus — include several statements that are often passed off as merely cultural and irrelevant for today. “I desire . . . that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:8) — hands must be lifted. “Women should adorn themselves . . . not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire” (1 Timothy 2:9) — women can’t wear jewelry. “[Women] will be saved through childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:15) — all women must have biological children (though this statement is more misunderstood than misapplied). “Let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honor” (1 Timothy 6:1) — Paul condones slavery. “No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits” (2 Timothy 2:4) — pastors can’t have second jobs.

In each of these cases, when the original meaning is understood properly, the passage does not come into our context as irrelevant. Men are to pray without anger; the position of their hands is not mandatory. Women are not to dress in a way that brings attention to their social standing but instead are to focus on their character. Women (and men) work out the implications of their salvation not by following the false teachers and their prohibition of procreation (as one example). Paul plants the seeds of what becomes abolition and expressly opposes “enslavers” (1 Timothy 1:10). Pastors are not to be “entangled,” but that is different from having a second job.1

Titus 2:5 and its apparent insistence that women be “working at home” falls into this category of often misunderstood passages. It has been used to teach that women can work only at home and cannot work elsewhere. Let’s look at the Pastoral Epistles to see if this is accurate.

Cultural Background

Paul spent over three years in Ephesus (Acts 20:31). When he traveled back through the area, stopping at Miletus, he told the Ephesian elders, “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30). Paul’s prophecy came true, and some Ephesian elders turned from the truth and were teaching falsehood.

It is critical to understand how bad the situation in Ephesus, as in Crete, had become.2 Only in seeing this background will we grasp the right interpretation of our passage. Allow me to offer an extended quotation from my commentary.

The opponents are factious (Titus 3:10), advancing into ungodliness (2 Timothy 2:16); they are rebellious, senseless babblers (Titus 1:10) and bring reproach on the church (1 Timothy 3:2, 7, 10; Titus 1:11–14). At one time they were part of the church community but later rejected the truth of the gospel and turned away to the heresy (1 Timothy 1:6, 19; 4:1; 6:10, 21; 2 Timothy 4:4; Titus 1:14; cf. Galatians 2:4; 2 Corinthians 11:4). They were not tricked by the heresy but rather made conscious decisions to turn away (1 Timothy 1:19). They are deceiving the Ephesian and Cretan church (Titus 1:10); they are hypocrites and liars (1 Timothy 4:2), and they profess to know God but deny him by their deeds (Titus 1:16). They are therefore self-condemned (Titus 3:11), and their consciences (1 Timothy 4:2; 6:5; Titus 1:15; cf. 1 Timothy 1:5) and minds (1 Timothy 6:5; 2 Timothy 3:8; Titus 1:15) are corrupted. They have a sickly craving (1 Timothy 6:4) and are robbed of the truth (1 Timothy 6:5). They are ignorant (1 Timothy 1:7), foolish, understanding nothing (1 Timothy 6:4), worthless for any good work (Titus 1:16) or for the gospel (2 Timothy 3:8). The opponents are perverted (Titus 3:11), unholy (2 Timothy 3:2), ungodly (2 Timothy 2:16), and lacking in love (1 Timothy 1:5), and their folly will eventually be evident to all (2 Timothy 3:9). They are dogmatic (1 Timothy 1:7) and devoted to their teachings (1 Timothy 1:4; 4:1). Even their motives are corrupt, wanting prestige (1 Timothy 1:7), money (1 Timothy 6:5–10; Titus 1:11), sex (2 Timothy 3:6), and pleasure (2 Timothy 3:4). As would be expected, they do not accept Paul’s or Timothy’s authority (1 Timothy 1:1–2; 4:12, 14; 6:12).3

In other words, they weren’t godly people! On top of all this, they appeared to focus their attention on the women in the church.

The opponents had significant success among the Ephesian women (2 Timothy 3:6), and some of their ascetic teaching was directed toward them (1 Timothy 4:3; possibly 1 Timothy 2:15). The opponents were actively seducing the women (2 Timothy 3:6), especially the young widows (1 Timothy 5:11–15), which helps explain the repeated call for marital faithfulness among the church leaders (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6). While it appears that the prominent leaders of the opposition were men, the women were also helping to spread the heresy (1 Timothy 2:12; possibly 5:13). According to one interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8–15, it is possible that the opponents were teaching the women to rebel openly against their husbands, and perhaps all male authority, and to dress seductively as an expression of that rebellion (see Comment on 1 Timothy 2:9).4

This explains Paul’s later description of some of the false teachers: “Among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:6–7).

The point for our purposes is that the false teachers were aggressively asserting their heretical teaching and were finding fertile ground in the church, especially among the women.

Nature of Paul’s Lists

Another peculiarity of the cultural context and how Paul addresses it is the nature of his lists. Throughout the Pastoral Epistles, we see lists of qualities that true Christians, and especially leaders, are to possess. Significantly, many of the qualities in these lists are the opposite of the characteristics of the false teachers. For example, the false teachers had brought reproach on the church (e.g., Titus 1:16), so church leaders are to be “above reproach” (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6) and have a good reputation (1 Timothy 3:7). The false teachers were seducing women (2 Timothy 3:6), so church leaders had to be faithful in their marriage (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6).5

This is a critical point. Paul’s requirements for all people, men and women, young and old, while true in and of themselves, must be understood against the backdrop of the historical setting. Paul is not just listing good virtues; he is listing virtues that would set the true Christians apart from the false teachers. In a sense, he is saying, “Pursue those virtues that are good in and of themselves — and that will also distinguish you from the sinful qualities of the false teachers.”

For example, 1 Timothy 2:15 may seem like one of the strangest verses in all the Bible. “[Women] will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” Why does Paul emphasize having children, as if he were teaching salvation by procreation (an interpretation for which no one would seriously argue)? The answer may lie in the fact that the false teachers were forbidding marriage (1 Timothy 4:3) and therefore, presumably, also forbidding having children. This backdrop also helps to explain Paul’s later admonition when he says, “I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander” (1 Timothy 5:14).

The church’s women were to work out the implications of their salvation not by following the false teachers, but, among other things, by accepting the callings for which God had created them.

Paul is saying that a woman’s salvation and the practical outworking of that salvation (cf. Philippians 2:12) do not consist in altering her role in the church. Rather, she is to accept her God-given role, one of the specific functions being the bearing of children (synecdoche). Of course, her salvation — and man’s — ultimately is predicated upon perseverance; she must live out her salvation in all faith and love and holiness, with modesty. This is the standard Pauline thought that salvation requires continual perseverance (cf. 1 Timothy 4:16), and good works, which, far from meriting salvation (cf. 1 Timothy 1:12–17), are evidence of that salvation (cf. Romans 2:6–10, 26–29; 1 Corinthians 6:9–11; Galatians 5:21).6

We come to understand verse 15 as we see it against the cultural backdrop, comparing Paul’s positive instructions with the negative example of the false teachers. The same is true of our passage, to which we now turn.

‘Working at Home’

Titus 2 contains a list of instructions for older men (verse 2), and then older women, including the admonition to “teach what is good” (verse 3). Unfortunately, the NIV translates the first word in verse 4 (Greek hina) as “then,” using it to start a new sentence. The NLT loses the connection between the two verses altogether. But Paul’s point is that their good teaching was to be “so that” (hina, NASB, CSB, NRSV, cf. ESV), “in this way” (NET), they could encourage the younger women “to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home [oikourgous], kind, and submissive to their own husbands” (2:4b–5a).

Both oikourgos and its variant oikouros occur only here in the New Testament and rarely in secular literature. Under these situations, we have to look at the morphology of the word and its biblical context to determine its meaning. Oikourgos is a compound word formed from oikos + ergon, “house/home” + “work.”

The variety of English translations shows the difficulty of defining oikourgos: “workers at home” (NASB, CSB), “working at home” (ESV), “to work in their homes” (NLT), “busy at home” (NIV), “good managers of the household” (NRSV, which does not see hagnas [“pure, chaste”] as its own category but as modifying oikourgous), “fulfilling their duties at home” (NET), and “to be good housewives” (TEV).

Note that there is nothing in the word’s morphology that suggests working only at home, nor does the word define the nature of the work. In fact, due to the rarity of the word, we would be wise not to define it too specifically. This is where the biblical context comes into the discussion.

Titus 2:5 in Biblical Context

Context provides an important clue. As we saw above, Paul is listing the good qualities that contrast with the bad qualities of the false teachers and their adherents. “Working at home” contrasts with the activity of the younger widows, who “learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not” (1 Timothy 5:13). “Working at home” also contrasts with another description of some of the women and the influence of the false teachers, as we’ve already seen (2 Timothy 3:6–7).

Obviously, these passages do not capture Paul’s assessment of all women of all time, but they do offer his description of some of the women in first-century Ephesus and Crete. Paul’s argument is that the older women are to urge the younger women to not be like the seduced younger women.

Another important piece of context is Paul’s instruction that younger widows were to “manage their households” (oikodespotein, 1 Timothy 5:14). There is a vast difference between a domestic slave (as some might understand “working at home”) and a wife who “manages” her household.

Broader biblical context also assures us that godly women can fulfill Titus 2:5 while also working outside the home. The noble (or strong) woman of Proverbs 31 certainly does not work only at home. “She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard” (Proverbs 31:16). It is instructive that the book of Ruth follows Proverbs in Hebrew book order; Ruth is one embodiment of the noble woman of the previous chapter, who did work outside the home.

Titus 2:5 Today

Notice that Paul’s instruction in Titus 2:5 is not grounded in creation, as is 1 Timothy 2:12–13. The reason for the instruction is “that the word of God may not be reviled” (Titus 2:5). Paul uses this argument two other times in the immediate context: “so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us” (verse 8); “so that in everything they [the slaves] may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (verse 10).

It is fair to say that in all cultures of all times, being “gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not” is always wrong (1 Timothy 5:13). It is always wrong to be “weak . . . burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:6–7). Doing anything that genuinely damages the cause of Christ is always wrong. To this point, the eternal truths behind the first-century cultural expressions come straight away into our culture.

Applying Titus 2:5 further requires us to consider what Paul does not say. Paul doesn’t say that women can work only at home. He doesn’t say that the burdens of managing the household don’t also fall on husbands. But what he clearly does say is that women, whether ancient or modern, are not to be like the ancient Ephesian and Cretan women, who were deceived, gullible, and neglecting their homes.

Applying the passage today also calls us to consider the drastic differences between the ancient and modern home, and the division of labor between husband and wife. Crucially, however, the family is not to be neglected, which was the very issue in Ephesus and Crete. I would argue that, today, a woman’s “working at home” calls her to focus on her children and her marriage. These are the biblical priorities that would be neglected with any activity resembling Ephesus and Crete.

Application would also have to take single mothers into account. When there is no husband to primarily shoulder household responsibilities, balancing work and home can be extremely difficult. While some can balance these priorities, many others struggle to do so. This is where the biblical challenge of caring for widows and orphans surfaces. If a single mother is struggling to “work at home,” maybe the church should step in to care for those in need.

When applied to modern culture, where working outside the home would not invite “the word of God [to] be reviled” (Titus 2:5), the cultural expression of Paul’s injunction would not apply.

In my opinion, however, if both parents work outside the home, and if the children are being neglected and the home is not being fruitfully managed, the verse does have something to say. In today’s culture, it is still true that when the focus of a wife (and her husband) are exclusively outside the home, the marriage and the family and the children suffer, which would then invite “the word of God [to] be reviled” (Titus 2:5). This is as wrong now as in ancient Crete.

It certainly is possible for a wife to work full time outside the home and not invite Paul’s critique, but I think it is quite difficult. My wife stayed home with our three energetic, rambunctious children. To make that happen, I committed to work two jobs and to be available evenings and at least one day a week. I hesitate to think of the negative impact a part-time mom or a disconnected dad would have had on our children’s personalities and values and faith, and on our witness in the church and the neighborhood.

A man in your small group asks you for counsel. For the last few weeks, he has suffered from debilitating back pain. He knows a broken body is an inescapable part of this fallen world, but he also wonders whether God is disciplining him for something. What does he need — a careful probing of the heart for sin, or an assurance that his suffering, though mysterious, is not in vain?

In your accountability group, a brother confesses to looking at pornography again. He says he’s struggling and fighting. He also seems ashamed. But he has seemed ashamed before, with little change. What does he need — a loving but firm warning, or another reminder that there is no condemnation in Christ?

A young woman you know has felt a gathering darkness over heart and mind. In her depression, she has begun to drift from Christian fellowship and other means of grace. She wonders aloud to you if she’s really a Christian. What does she need — an encouragement that God is with her, an exhortation to return to the church, a referral to a medical doctor, or all three?

“Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak,” the apostle Paul tells us (1 Thessalonians 5:14). But sometimes the fainthearted seem idle and the idle seem fainthearted; sometimes the weak look willful and the willful look weak. If only people came with a sign on the forehead: “Admonishment needed”; “Encouragement, please”; “A little help will do.”

But they don’t. Instead, people come to us just as we come to others: compound and complex, confused and confusing. People are seas, with hearts hidden deep. And God calls us to be divers.

Water from the Deepest Sea

God really does call us, all of us, to discern the deep-down hearts of our brothers and sisters. No, we are not all pastors or professional counselors. But heart work and soul care do not belong to pastors and counselors alone. Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians 5:14 to the whole church, not just its leaders. Which means God calls all of us to admonish, to encourage, to help — and to discern when to do which. He calls all of us to counsel.

And if he calls us to counsel, he calls us to grow in counseling, which often begins with noticing our tendencies to counsel not so well. Perhaps you can relate to a few common faults I fall prey to, at least when left to myself.

Left to myself, I counsel quickly. I may give a show of good listening as you talk, but often I have already finished your sentences and am crafting my response. “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak,” James writes (James 1:19). But why should I slow my speech when I already know what to say? So I nod with polite impatience, forgo follow-up questions, and give the answer already waiting on my lips.

Left to myself, I also counsel superficially. “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water,” the wise man tells us (Proverbs 20:5), but my natural plumb line is short. Too often, I counsel in the shallows — addressing this behavior, developing a plan for that habit, while the heart still hides in the deeps.

And left to myself, I counsel lopsidedly. Comfort comes easily to my tongue; not so with correction. No doubt, our churches know some who correct others all too easily. Like Eliphaz the Temanite, they struggle to let words for the wind blow away (Job 6:26), but seize them, fix upon them, and fashion their rebuke. They speak confidently. They speak courageously. But like Eliphaz, they do not always speak “what is right” (Job 42:7).

But I usually fall off on the other side. The Puritan John Owen warned of counselors like me at my worst — counselors who “have good words in readiness for all comers,” no matter who the comer may be. We affirm; we encourage; we assure and console and uplift. We reflect a Jesus ever tender, rarely (or never) tough. Owen’s assessment of such counsel was not hopeful: “seldom useful, ofttimes pernicious” (Works of John Owen, 6:568).

So, we seek to grow. We seek to replace our common follies with the slow, deep, well-rounded wisdom of the Spirit. But how?

1. Learn from the Wonderful Counselor.

Isaiah 50:4 gives us a long-term aim and a daily practice. Isaiah speaks most immediately of the Lord’s servant, the Lord’s Christ, but his pattern gives shape to our own.

The Lord God has given me     the tongue of those who are taught,that I may know how to sustain with a word     him who is weary.Morning by morning he awakens;     he awakens my ear     to hear as those who are taught.

The wisest counselors speak with “the tongue of those who are taught.” They can fill weary spirits with courage; they can correct and restore straying hearts. And all by simply opening their mouth. In dim reflection of God’s own speech, they bring light and life “with a word.” To have such a tongue is our long-term aim.

We won’t attain that aim, however, without daily listening — and listening not first to others, but to God. He himself is the “Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6), and “morning by morning,” he awakens our ear to learn more of his wonderful ways — his wonderful, surprising ways.

Consider the counseling of our Lord Jesus himself, the one with the perfectly God-taught tongue. Who among us would have told the rich young ruler to go sell all he had (Mark 10:21)? Or who would have known when to gently chide Peter, when to ignore him, and when to address him as Satan (Matthew 14:31; 16:23; 17:4–5)? Or who would have warned the healed paralytic to “sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14)? Or who would have restored a fallen disciple without reproof (John 21:15–19)?

To be sure, we do not have the depth of insight that Jesus did. But as we listen to him — and to the words of God throughout the rest of Scripture — we start to gain fresh instincts. We see new sides to old problems. We find new keys to old locks. We realize that our spiritual medicine cabinet has only one or two shelves, while God’s is a walk-in. And so, slowly, we become more like the Balm of Gilead himself, who holds ten thousand balms.

To those who want to be taught, Bible reading and meditation offers a daily tutelage under our Wonderful Counselor, giving us words as deep as human hearts.

2. Listen — really listen — to others.

Then, in time, counseling opportunities arise. We sit across the table from a small-group member, or drive alongside an accountability partner, or talk on the phone with a friend in need. And before we venture to speak, we find ourselves faced with a task that can often feel harder than opening our mouths: keeping them closed. So, we listen. We really listen.

True listening can easily elude us, even after we have lingered silently in God’s presence. James counsels quick hearing and slow speech because we often reverse the speeds (James 1:19). So, we may feel an inner itch to offer counsel now, before we’ve really heard. We may want to interrupt impulsively. We may focus so intently on our coming response that another’s words become muffled, lost somewhere between their mouth and our ears. And hearing, we don’t hear.

Two resolves may help to open our ears. First, we can resolve to not finish another’s sentences — either in mind or in mouth. Sentence-finishing can take many shapes. Rehearsing an answer while another still speaks; assuming we know where a story is headed; allowing thoughts to wander because we think we’ve got the gist — all these can be subtle ways of finishing sentences we haven’t yet heard. And they take us dangerously close to the unwisdom of Proverbs 18:13: “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.”

Second, we can resolve to ask questions. Questions are speed bumps for quick tongues. They slow us down, forcing us to clarify rather than assume, allowing others the dignity of both finishing and explaining their own sentences. Asked wisely, questions also guide us toward the hidden deep-sea heart, as we learn to plumb below the surface of behavior and ponder darker depths. And slowly, as we swim in this sea of words, we begin to grasp a pearl. Hearing, we hear.

Whatever other strategies we may use to listen well, wise counselors enter a conversation ready to be surprised, confronted, and drawn in by another’s complex humanity.

3. Pray, discern, respond.

The process so far may look somewhat passive, but the true listener is anything but. Beneath the questions and calm demeanor is a spirit of prayer. He tries fitting pieces together. He “ponders how to answer” in the conversation’s pauses (Proverbs 15:28). And he discerns. He begins to trace an idler’s sluggishness coming to light; he sees a faintness of the heart appearing; he touches upon some profound weakness.

We will not always discern rightly, of course. Our listening and our questions may reveal the heart, but they cannot read the heart. And if even the apostles could misjudge the hearts of men (Acts 8:13, 20–23; 2 Timothy 4:10), surely we will do the same.

But we can grow. And we will know we are growing, in part, when we find ourselves surprised by what we say. In addressing a certain struggle, we had always spoken comfort; now we hear ourselves exhorting. In addressing a certain person, we usually corrected; now we find ourselves offering practical help. Increasingly, our words, like the people in front of us, gain depth. We respond to complexity with wisdom and creativity. We reflect, in some small measure, what David Powlison calls “our Redeemer’s skillful love” (The Pastor as Counselor, 15).

And when in doubt — when unsure of what to say, when perplexed and tongue-tied — we can still simply recite God’s own words, knowing that every syllable, rightly handled, holds spiritual power. Yes, caring for each other can be complex, but not so complex that ordinary believers cannot deeply minister to one another through humble Scripture-quoting and earnest prayer. The Bible’s words, not ours, are God-breathed, and sometimes the best counsel is a simple breathing of his breath.

But whether we speak God-shaped words or God’s own words, the more we grow in wisdom, the more often we will see the proverb come to pass: “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” (Proverbs 15:23). How good indeed to feel the heart lovingly plumbed, kindly searched, and then skillfully addressed with our Counselor’s wonderful wisdom.

“Effeminacy” is an old-fashioned word. It was once commonly used. Then it was banished from polite discourse. Recently, the word has enjoyed something of a comeback in evangelical debates over human sexuality and anthropology. Online, it is frequently chosen as a way to toe the line between acceptable apologetics and abusive rhetoric. Some people use the word to be tough. Some use it to be bad.

But “effeminacy,” understood rightly, is also a biblical word and concept, appearing in a text so relevant to modern debates that some detractors have dubbed it a “clobber passage.” The Presbyterian Church in America seems to have recognized just how loaded the word is. The denomination requested a study of 1 Corinthians 6:9 as a part of an Ad Interim Study Committee on Human Sexuality. But surprisingly, the committee relegated this aspect of their commission to a single footnote. They were, perhaps, not quite ready to talk about effeminacy.

But like it or not, people are talking about effeminacy. And like it or not, the word appears in the Christian tradition. So, we would do well to understand it — what it is, what it means for sexual ethics, and whether Christians should use this term today.

Effeminacy in the New Testament

The word “effeminacy” appears in older English translations of 1 Corinthians 6:9. The underlying Greek is malakoi, the plural of malakos. In its immediate context, Paul appears to apply effeminacy to men who engage in homosexual practices. The word is preceded by “adulterers” and then followed by an odd term, perhaps coined by Paul, once translated “abusers of themselves with mankind” but now usually translated as simply “homosexuals” (arsenokoitai).

Commonly, interpreters argue that the two terms (malakoi and arsenokoitai) refer to the passive and active partners of homosexual activity. So, for example, the ESV translates both terms together with the phrase “men who practice homosexuality.” The case for translating 1 Corinthians 6:9 in this way is strong, but it has the obvious weakness of reducing two distinct concepts to one.

It also removes a rhetorical subtlety present in the original. Malakos sometimes did refer to the passive partner in a homosexual relationship, but it did so as a figure of speech. The literal meaning of malakos is “soft.” Thus, when applied to those engaging in certain behavior, this was something of an epithet, analogous to calling someone a “Nancy boy.” Choosing the narrow, and presumably narrowly accurate, option loses this aspect of the way the word functioned. It was not a specific or technical term but rather a broad one that was used precisely to bring to mind a range of other, mostly unfavorable, connotations.

Malakos appears two other times in Scripture, in parallel passages where Jesus is describing the difference between John the Baptist and rich men. Rich men wear “soft [malakois] clothing,” Jesus says in Matthew 11:8. In Luke 7:25, this line is repeated, but an additional description is added: “Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts” (KJV). Soft clothes, then, are luxurious clothes, gorgeous and delicate. Here malakos is also used figuratively. Yes, the clothes are literally soft, but their softness indicates their relationship to luxury. They are fine clothes, expensive clothes. The reason John the Baptist doesn’t wear them is not because he inherently dislikes silk. He doesn’t wear them because he is an ascetic. John does not live a soft life of luxury but rather a hard life of self-denial and self-mastery.

A closely related word in Luke 7:25 is tryphē. Translated there as “luxury,” it also appears in 2 Peter 2:13: “They count it pleasure to revel [tryphēn] in the daytime.” This usage is trickier. The context has to do with pleasure but also with a lack of shame. The sin is committed openly or flagrantly. In his commentary on 2 Peter, John Calvin offers this translation: “luxuriating in their errors.” Tryphē, then, carries connotations of a lack of discipline or constraint. Both malakos and tryphē also could be translated as “effeminate” or “effeminacy.”

Does ‘Effeminate’ Mean Feminine?

Neither malakos nor tryphē carries the linguistic association with the female sex that the English word “effeminacy” does. This might be considered a strength in that it allows contemporary Christians to discuss the moral issue without being immediately pulled into a discussion of the sexes. But the New Testament does use a word that stands opposite of malakos, and this word does carry an association with one’s sex.

That word is andrizomai in 1 Corinthians 16:13. It was once translated as “quit ye like men” (KJV) but is now often rendered “be courageous” (NIV, NLT, NET). Once again, the privileging of a narrow sort of clarity obscures the literal word and its rhetorical force. In context, andrizomai does indicate courage, but it does so after the manner of the contemporary expression “man up.” The word invokes the concept of a man in order to symbolize strength. Interestingly, the next moral duty listed in verse 13 is “be strong.” “Quit ye like men” captures the fact that andrizomai indicates manliness.

Malakos and andreios (the adjectival form of andrizomai) can be seen, then, as opposites — and as corresponding to effeminacy and manliness, respectively. Effeminacy is a soft and indulgent character trait. Manliness is a courage that holds strong under pressure.

Importantly, both of these terms can be applied to both men and women. After all, Paul is writing to a group that includes both men and women when he calls them to “act like men.” One place where this interesting rhetorical convention has been preserved is in the Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal service. After the person, man or woman, is baptized, the minister makes the sign of the cross on his (or her) forehead and says, “[We] do sign him [or her] with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he [or she] shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil.” Female as well as male Anglicans are called to manfully fight. Andrizomai works the same way. Both men and women are called to “man up.”

Can women be warned against effeminacy, then? That sounds strange to modern ears. Understanding the full range of effeminacy, however, will show that the answer is yes. To be clear, effeminacy is not the same as femininity. And if a woman commits the sin of effeminacy, it is not because she is being overly feminine. Rather, she is abusing or distorting femininity in a way that creates vice. This claim will take some further explaining, and to make it easier to understand, we need to look at what effeminacy has meant in the broader tradition.

Effeminacy, Decadence, and Deviancy

Malakos and other language related to the concept of effeminacy appear widely in ancient literature. Philo of Alexandria and Josephus both use them, as do Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch. As a moral concept, ancient effeminacy could mean physical weakness, mental weakness, cowardice, a failure to live up to one’s duty, luxury, or sexual immorality. In this last meaning, the immorality could appear when the man assumed the role of a woman, and it could also appear when a man prioritized his lust for women over his duties and the pursuit of virtue. A few examples can demonstrate these meanings.

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle defines malakos as “luxury” in his Nicomachean Ethics (7.1.4). By “luxury,” he means indulgence or the lack of self-restraint. He states that the luxurious man is intemperate and beholden to his own passions. He gives in to his desires and violates what he knows to be right. This sort of “softness” can manifest itself in exceeding the bounds of propriety as well as in shrinking away from duty out of fear. Aristotle even applies this vice of softness to those who are not steadfast in their opinions but too quickly abandon them.

PLUTARCH

Plutarch was a Greek philosopher and historian who lived in the first-century Roman empire. Though not a Christian, Plutarch would have been a contemporary of the first generation of Christians, and so his cultural outlook is instructive for the literary and intellectual world of the New Testament. In one of his moral treatises, a character denounces the love of pleasure as “a soft [malakos] life” (The Dialogue on Love, lines 750–51). This soft life involves spending time “in the bosoms and beds of women.” It is criticized for being “devoid of manliness and friendship and inspiration.”

The character speaking these lines is not one of Plutarch’s examples of wisdom, but his words do help to explain what “softness” meant in the first-century Roman empire. It indicated sensuality or pleasure-seeking as its own end. A few lines later, another character states that men who allow themselves to be sexually abused by other men are guilty of “weakness and effeminacy [malakos].” The language used is quite crude, and it clearly has to do with the subordinate member of a male homosexual act.

And so, in Plutarch, effeminacy has to do with sexual profligacy (which is a sort of luxury) and the passive homosexual partner. The notion common to both meanings is that of decadence and forsaking duty. This sort of softness is a pursuit of pleasure that leads to prodigal living and even disgrace.

JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

The early Christian bishop and theologian John Chrysostom uses the term “effeminacy” in largely the same way Plutarch does. Chrysostom applies the word to luxury and describes offenses like “delicate cookery” and “vulgar ostentation.” Under the first class, he includes “making sauces,” and under the second, “superfluous” art — that is, artwork, design, or fashion that exceeds the bounds of necessity and function.

Throughout his argument, Chrysostom twice alludes to men imitating or behaving like women as cases of effeminate luxury. By this, he does not mean that they are presenting themselves as women per se. He is not talking about actual cases of androgyny. Instead, these men were wearing the kind of expensive and luxurious clothing typically associated with women. Chrysostom writes, “When it perverts men to the gestures of women, and causes them by their sandals to grow wanton and delicate, we will set it amidst the things hurtful and superfluous” (Homily 49 on Matthew, section 5).

In this same section, Chrysostom points out that women also should avoid luxurious clothing. Alluding to 1 Timothy 2:9, he says, “In spite of Paul’s prohibiting the married woman to have costly clothing, you extend this effeminacy even to your shoes.” As strange as it sounds, women too could be guilty of effeminacy. Typically, this rhetoric was used against men; men dressed decadently were wearing clothing and jewelry meant for women. But Chrysostom was actually asserting a distinctive ethic for women too. They also were called to reject luxury, to reject effeminacy. Indeed, both men and women should “quit ye like men” and maintain a decorum of moderation and humility.

AUGUSTINE

Another piece of evidence in late antiquity is found in Augustine’s City of God. In book 7, Augustine describes a group of people he calls “the effeminates consecrated to the Great Mother.” These men have “pomaded hair and powdered faces,” and they “glid[e] along with womanish languor” (City of God 7.26). This “Great Mother” is the goddess “Cybele” or “Kybelis.”

Augustine goes on to say that Cybele turns her devotees into eunuchs. This was a real historical phenomenon. The Roman poet Catullus has a work where he describes Attis as being possessed by the spirit of Cybele and castrating himself. These “effeminates,” then, are described as such precisely because of the sexual element in the vice. They have been turned, as it were, into women. They then devote their lives to the service of this goddess and assume a female presentation.

We can see that ancient effeminacy combined elements of luxury or wantonness with sexual deviancy. The sexual deviancy could be effeminate in two ways. First, it could be an indulgence wherein the man “wasted” his strength and virtue. Second, it could be a case where the man took on the role of the woman, usually in an overly elaborate or decadent way. This androgyny was either uniquely cultic or a form of pleasure-seeking and indulgence within male social groups.

THOMAS AQUINAS

The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas discusses effeminacy in his landmark Summa Theologiae. There he interacts with both Aristotle and 1 Corinthians 6 before concluding that the core problem with effeminacy is “withdraw[ing] from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, yielding as it were to a weak motion” (ST II-II, q. 138). Thomas states that the opposite of effeminacy is perseverance.

In one of his replies, he also mentions the element of sexual deviancy, but he says that the term “effeminacy” is applied to deviancy by way of custom because the effeminate man has grown soft. Interestingly, Thomas believes this softness is primarily mental and volitional. The man in that case has “yielded” to a “weak motion.” He has not persevered in his duty and calling to be a man but has rather abandoned it for the pursuit of fleshly pleasure.

This understanding of effeminacy brings the two seemingly distinct meanings together. A passive or dominated man and a lecherous or libidinous man form two sides of the same coin. Both are failing in their pursuit of the good. They quit their duty and abandon themselves to vice. They do this, not merely out of ordinary fear, but because they sense a “lack of pleasure” in the ethical struggle.

On a similar note, “manliness” meant a strong and persistent battle against sin. Commenting on the use of andrizomai in 1 Corinthians 16:13, John Calvin summarizes it as “fortitude.” Matthew Henry’s commentary explains it this way: “Show yourselves men in Christ, by your steadiness, by your sound judgment and firm resolution.” If effeminacy is the tendency to fall away in the absence of pleasure, manliness is courageous perseverance through challenging struggle.

Effeminacy Today

This historical understanding of effeminacy can assist contemporary promoters of a renewed masculinity, but it also challenges certain assumptions. The Christian critique of effeminacy does promote strength and perseverance in the face of struggle, but it does not simply criticize perceived “girly men.” A man of slight build with a nasally voice might be effeminate, but those characteristics would not necessarily be what made him so. On the other hand, if a man of that physiognomy overcame his obstacles and achieved virtue, all the while embodying Christian faith, hope, and love, he could prove himself manly. Seeing the whole picture isn’t always easy.

We must always be on guard against simple prejudice. There’s nothing intrinsically effeminate about a man who sings, cooks, plays the piano, or pursues “indoor” vocations. In fact, all of those activities have historically attracted various elite men. Similarly, a woman pursuing intellectual rigor is not violating her femininity, as the example of Mary proves (Luke 10:39).

But terms like “effeminacy” and “manliness” do retain concepts that many today have largely rejected. In order to avoid effeminacy, you must have functioning concepts of cowardice, luxury, virtue, perseverance, struggle, and victory. You must also believe that people and endeavors have godly ends or points of completion that define their nature, value, and success. These terms can then be applied to men and women in more sex-specific forms, but they would do so by defining a manly man as one who acts in accordance with his created nature, in pursuit of godly purpose, persevering in the face of opposition and distraction — from the world, his own flesh, and the devil. He then does so in a masculine mode, or “as a man,” and continues in them.

Additionally, Christian manhood requires other characteristics like meekness, moderation, sobriety, and gravity. A godly man avoids “sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge; all excessive passions, distracting cares; immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations” (Westminster Larger Catechism 136). Health and fitness are good things, but they are good things in relationship to other goals. They must enable one to achieve godly ends, including protection, provision, and service. A flashy or excessively “manly” notion of masculinity is actually an artifice standing in place of the real thing. Insofar as these artificial versions of manhood give in to vice by way of the soft motions of indulgence or intemperance, they become “effeminate.”

Retaining the vocabulary of “effeminacy” and “manfulness” in our theological ethics is worth the hard work. While both terms need to be used with care, they capture specific biblical concepts that have held a stable place in ancient and Christian history but are in shorter supply today. Wrestling with their unfamiliar or unconformable associations, especially in the areas of sexuality, can help us appropriately criticize older errors as well as newer ones. It can expand our understanding of the ways the Bible retains features of the ancient world and the ways it transforms them. Finally, understanding these words can help men and women achieve their respective virtuous ends in the body of Christ.

Audio Transcript

Pastor John, I was tinkering around the other day on ChatGPT. And I asked it to spit out a tweet for me about artificial intelligence and Christian joy — and to write it all in your voice. Here’s what it said:

Artificial intelligence may bring new levels of convenience and productivity, but let us not mistake it for true joy. Our ultimate satisfaction can only be found in Christ, who alone can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts.

Simplistic connections here, but not too bad. It does actually sound like you. But get this. That second sentence, as it’s written — “Our ultimate satisfaction can only be found in Christ, who alone can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts” — that statement has never appeared in your written works, or anyone’s! It has never appeared online, anywhere, according to Google. From what I can see, it’s an original sentence, which is wild.

As you know, we’re in the early stages of AI, when large datasets can be crunched and synthesized, and computers can essentially spit out what appear to be thoughtful responses to prompts. Your ministry has produced one massive dataset, to put it crudely. And a day is not far off, and maybe is here, when people will be tempted not to go to this podcast or to your sermons or books to hear from you; they will simply prompt for a summary answer to what John Piper might say on a given ethical dilemma or Bible text. And some AI model will spit out a summary response in text, or maybe one day in your own spoken voice or even in a video-generated response that looks like you talking.

It’s all still very early. Much is going to change. But I want your early thoughts here, and to get us there, I want to put one subtopic aside and make one assumption. First, there are legal issues all over this. Let’s put those aside for now. Second, let’s assume, for the sake of today’s episode, that the generated text is actually pretty good and a reasonably accurate representation of what you have said. What’s your first gut instinct here, at the highest level? What would you want the age of computer-generated John Piper AI to hear from you, in your own living voice, about how you want your legacy of works to be viewed in this coming age of AI?

Well, I like that last question; namely, focusing my attention on the highest level, which I’ll try to do. But it’s remarkable that this shows up right now, because just a few weeks ago in the faculty forum at Bethlehem College & Seminary, where I teach and serve as chancellor, the issue of artificial intelligence, and specifically ChatGPT, was part of the planned discussion.

Detecting Deception

In preparation, one of our professors sent around the results of his request from ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, I learned). And he had given the chatbot this instruction: “Write an essay on Augustine’s view of disordered love.” And it produced a four-hundred-word essay, which I read, and which I suppose would get a passing grade in your typical lit class in the university (and for sure in high school), which of course is a great concern for teachers.

And there are (I learned also) plagiarism-detection programs like Turnitin, which claim to be able to spot artificially produced essays at about 99 percent accuracy. So who knows: maybe with the advancing possibilities of cheating, and calling AI productions your own work, there will be equal advances in software to detect that deception. And as you point out, really not just as potential but as realities, there are people right now producing artificial John Piper quotations and artificial John Piper voices, which are close enough to accurate that the average person won’t know the difference.

But your question at this point — thankfully, because I’m no expert — is not about legal issues. It’s not about detection possibilities. It’s about this: What’s your first gut instinct here at the highest level? What would you want the age of computer-generated John Piper AI to hear from you, in order for your own living voice to inform the world of how you want your legacy of works to be viewed in the age of AI?

My gut doesn’t reach out first to my tongue. My gut reaches out first to my mind, where there’s a lot of Bible circulating around, and my gut consults with my mind and says, “Hey, mind, what does the Bible say, or imply, about this?” So, here’s the distillation of my answer to that way you posed the question (really high level).

Right Thinking and Right Rejoicing

The biblical vision of Christian Hedonism really does provide a remarkable framework for responding to artificial intelligence. This was a surprise to me because I haven’t thought about it before. Remember, Christian Hedonism says that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Now, what that does is elevate the spiritual affections of the human heart to the highest possible level in the unique role that human beings play in the purposes of God in the creation of the world.

“God glorifies himself in the life of humans when those humans understand him truly (in their minds) and rejoice in him duly (in their hearts).”

God created the universe in order to put his glory on display and to communicate himself to his creatures for our understanding and our enjoyment (Psalm 19:1; Isaiah 43:7; Romans 1:19–21; Romans 9:20–23; and on and on). The purpose of God to glorify himself in creation reaches its God-intended climax when human beings not only rightly understand but rightly feel the nature of God’s reality and the preciousness of his fellowship. God glorifies himself in the life of humans when those humans understand him truly (in their minds) and rejoice in him duly (in their hearts). If either of those is missing, mind-understanding or heart-rejoicing, God is not glorified as he ought to be.

And if either of those is missing, the other one is flawed. Right ideas without right rejoicing are barren, mechanical — and yes, you could say artificial. Even in the human mind — not just in the computer — they’re artificial if they are not penetrated with rejoicing duly. Rejoicing without right ideas, on the other hand, is like froth on a drink and not fruit on a vine.

For right thinking to glorify God, it must be attached to right rejoicing in God. And for rejoicing in God to glorify God, it must be rooted in right thinking about God. In other words, the spiritual affections of the human heart are of the essence in the achievement of the purposes of God in creating the world.

Joy of the New Heart

These spiritual affections, the affections of the human heart, will never be the product of computerized data banks. And I say that not only because computers will never be human hearts — that is, they’ll never be created as humans in God’s image. I say it also because, not only are human hearts or souls of another nature from computers and computer language, but (and this is even more significant) the God-glorifying, Christ-exalting human heart is a new creation that is brought into being by a supernatural — not a natural, not a computerized — intervention by the Holy Spirit.

It’s called “new birth,” or “new creation,” or “new person.” The new creation in Christ, the newborn heart, the supernaturally created person, is the only person who can rejoice in God for who he really is. The eyes of the heart have been opened by the Holy Spirit. The spiritual beauty of Christ in the gospel is seen, and the echo of this beauty in the heart is to trust him and rejoice in him and treasure him.

Those God-glorifying affections, spilling over in outward acts of love, are the reason God created the universe. Which means, for ChatGPT, that it is quadruply cut off from God-intended purposes for intelligence.

Quadruply Cut Off

First, it is a kind of intelligence, not affections. But affections are of the essence in living a Christ-exalting, God-glorifying human life.

Second, this so-called intelligence is the product of a machine, not a heart. And the heart is of the essence in living a Christ-exalting, God-glorifying human life.

Third, the causes and defects of this so-called intelligence are all natural, not supernatural. But the Bible makes plain that the merely natural man (and all the more the natural computer) cannot be what humans are created to be; namely, God-glorifying persons.

Fourth, this artificial intelligence is defective in the same way that a natural man is defective. It can rise no higher than the natural, fallen, unregenerate heart of man. Intelligence, as God gave it at first, was designed not only to perceive natural, external reality — and then to assemble it — but also to see in it, to see through it, the reality of the glory of God: the greatness, the beauty, the worth of the infinite Person who created us. When intelligence cannot do this — cannot spiritually discern, see, and feel that glory — it fails in the most important reason that intelligence exists.

So, in answer to the question, I would like the legacy of my works to be viewed as the fruit of a finite, and fallible, and imperfect human mind and human heart that were touched by the supernatural work of God in Christ, and enabled to see the glory of God, and feel something of the worth of God, and reflect for the world the glory of God, for the supernatural enjoyment of as many people as possible.

A Calvinist friend once asked me what writing projects in history currently occupied my attention. I hesitated to answer as I was certain he would find my present historical focus quite outré. But answer I did (and I was not wrong about the initial response).

I told him that I was writing a variety of essays on the theology of color — not the question of race, I was quick to add, but actual colors. By that point, I had written essays on the colors white, red, and pink, and was hard at work on the color green in the literary corpus of Jonathan Edwards, who believed that green was God’s favorite color. My friend looked at me with some amazement, and I could sense from his face that he thought my interests quite odd.

This small exchange made me realize that for far too many, being a Calvinist was mainly about soteriological matters and not the glory of God in the entirety of life.

Studying in the Spirit

My conversion took place in the mid-1970s in a North American evangelical world convulsed by what has come to be called the Charismatic Movement. I encountered the movement early in my Christian life, and it gave me an abiding interest in the person and work of the Holy Spirit. It should not be surprising, then, that when it came to my doctoral dissertation (written at Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto), I could think to study only something in the realm of the Spirit (pneumatology).

Ultimately, my thesis dealt with what some might regard as an arcane topic: the Pneumatomachian controversy in the fourth century, which was centered on debates about the deity of the Holy Spirit. Specifically, I examined how Scripture shaped the way that two fourth-century Greek theologians, Athanasius of Alexandria (c.299–373) and Basil of Caesarea (c.330–379), thought and wrote about the Spirit’s godhead.

When I graduated from the University of Toronto with my doctorate in 1982, I was extremely blessed to be hired to teach church history at Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto.

What Five Points?

Ted Barton, the academic dean responsible for hiring me, was a tremendous mentor in the first few years of my teaching. When he interviewed me, he asked me, among other topics, what I thought of the “five points of Calvinism.” Amazingly, despite the fact I had earned a doctorate in church history, I had no particular knowledge of these doctrines.

I told Ted that if he let me know what they were, I would be able to answer his question. He said that was fine and quickly passed on to another question without giving me any particulars about these doctrines. The school had been having some problems with Calvinism, and in Ted’s mind, it must have been a good thing that I had no idea what these doctrines were! Within a few years, though, the doctrines had become a very familiar part of my Christian world.

During the 1980s, as I read Puritan authors like John Owen (1616–1683) and Banner of Truth books like The Grace of God in the Gospel, I came to a careful consideration of Reformed truth. Most significantly, at some point in the academic year 1985–1986, I encountered the Calvinistic writings of the Particular Baptist Andrew Fuller (1754–1815).

Fuller not only deepened my understanding of Calvinistic truths about salvation, but he also deepened my commitments as a Baptist (some who become Calvinists gravitate to paedobaptism). He did this by showing me, first of all, that Baptists had a rich heritage: his literary corpus is a robust collection of spirituality, rich in Christ-centeredness and crucicentric, ardent about holiness and the importance of the affections, and aflood with love for the lost, family, and friends.

I had questioned why on earth God had saved me among Canadian evangelical Baptists whose heritage seemed to be limited to an embattled and fissiparous Fundamentalism. Fuller, whose thought drew from the minds of men like John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, showed me that Baptists had a far deeper lineage than the twentieth century.

Ideas in Stone and Color

Most importantly, though, Fuller’s overriding passion to live his life full-out for the glory of God has been central to my own spiritual formation as a Christian and as a historian. For me, that passion for the glory of God in all of life has involved a keen interest in art and architecture.

Now, while Fuller helped me understand that all of life must be lived for the glory of God, he himself could be quite dismissive of various fields of human endeavor. For instance, on one occasion, a friend — probably James Hinton (1761–1823), the Baptist minister of Oxford — was taking Fuller around Oxford University and showing him some of its architectural features. After a while, Fuller apparently turned to his friend and suggested that they return to Hinton’s dwelling to discuss justification by faith, which was far more interesting to the Baptist pastor-theologian.

Well, I think Fuller was wrong to be so dismissive of architecture, which has rightly been described as ideas in stone. As a Reformed church historian, my interests, research, and writing need to take in all of life and not just theology proper, for the simple fact that the entire universe and its various elements are of deep concern to their Creator. He made them and moment by moment sustains them. A growing philosophical interest in the subject of aesthetics helped to make me aware that, in addition to questions of truth and goodness (on which Reformed thinkers and theologians have spent so much time and effort), we who confess divine sovereignty in every sphere of life need to spend energy and time reflecting on the impress of divine beauty on our world.

And here, Jonathan Edwards, the theological mentor to Andrew Fuller, has been enormously helpful. His linkage of the Holy Spirit to divine beauty brought together my interest in things pneumatological with this fascination with created beauty and color — even if I dissent from his estimation of God’s favorite color!

And as to God’s favorite color, that glorious refraction of white light called the rainbow might well offer a clue.

Pastors are men atop a watchtower. They keep awake, while others sleep. The Holy Spirit has placed them there to oversee the church. They scan the darkness; they have a horn to alarm the people of noiseless foes and distant lanterns.

The good pastor descends from Ezekiel.

Son of man, I have made [you] a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. (Ezekiel 33:7–8)

He alarms the people against their dearest enemy: their own sin. He alerts them of more than heresy and wolves and Satan, but of God. The Holy One is coming; are they ready? If the pastors blow no trumpet, how will those unprepared not die unthoughtfully in their sins? They were elevated to see and to speak and to give the alarm. When pastors tell them about what they do not wish to hear, we do so to save their lives (Ezekiel 3:18).

God branded this image of the watchman upon the apostle’s soul. In his farewell speech to fellow pastors in Ephesus, Paul lifts up his hands: “I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26–27). Paul did not shrink back from the hardest parts of Scripture. He stood up straight, and if anything would profit their souls, he taught it without apology (Acts 20:20). And as he did, he called his fellow pastors to the watchtower with him:

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. (Acts 20:28)

The Discomforter

Brothers in ministry, have we withheld some of God’s counsel to sinners and saints? I feel tempted to. How easy it is to downplay God’s holiness, evil’s contortedness, humanity’s sunkenness, sin’s deceitfulness. How subtle to laugh off death’s suddenness, hell’s foreverness, Christ’s exclusiveness, judgment’s nearness. How comfortable to never lay siege to flinty hearts; to leave the scalpel outside the operatory. Few will complain.

Though we desire to give hope, comfort, and satisfaction to our people, we must not do so unlawfully. We have different ministries, temperaments, and ways of saying things — but we preach the same Bible. The Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures is clearly not only a Comforter, but first a Discomforter. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and coming judgment when we faithfully preach his word (John 16:8–11) — his word that “is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). And he charges his messengers not to shrink back.

Our focus is Jesus Christ — “him we proclaim . . .” And how do we proclaim him? “. . . warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28). Far from being irrelevant, warnings serve the church to present everyone mature in Christ. We want everlasting happiness and comfort and satisfaction in God for our people. And God has issued sacred cautions to help us all safely home.

Thornless Roses

The first way to deal falsely with souls, then, would be to withhold the warning to the wicked or the lapsing: “If you continue in this way, you shall surely die.” The second, more subtle way would be to yell indiscriminately from the tower, “You all shall surely live!” In other words, to hand out the conditional promises of God unconditionally. The first withholds rough words; the second hands out precious promises to anyone who happens to hear them.

Imagine you are assigned to preach the incomparable Romans 8:28: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” How would you preach this?

This preacher would spend all his time tasting the honey. “All things work together for good. All things. Who has thought too much about this promise or flew above its clouds? Only begin to wrap your heart around the good that God is sailing your all things toward, and it would burst for joy.” The problem is not what he teaches, but what he does not teach. If his set pattern is to overlook the conditions, we have found a mortal wiser than God. In reality, he takes a knife to the promises and hands out thornless roses. Two thorns lay on the ground: “For those who love God . . . for those who are called according to his purpose.”

What does it mean to love God? Do I love God? He will not think to ask or tell. What is this calling and this purpose? He does not say. He skips ahead to the promise; he wants good for them, and he will hop the fence to give it to them. To him, the text simply says, “God works all things for good.”

A Book of Conditions

Despite our mixed motives, it is never safe to abridge God’s word. Such consistent oversight in your preaching will ring hollow for all students of Scripture and allow the enemy to smirk past your tower in broad daylight. Consider how many promises of our great inheritance post conditions at their gates.

“God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. (Romans 4:5)

“You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:14)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)

If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13)

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. (Psalm 1:1)

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. (Psalm 103:13)

“To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” (Revelation 2:7)

[God will] present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. (Colossians 1:22–23)

The promise that God uses all pains, groans, tears, setbacks, cancers, miscarriages, tragedies as winds to blow his people to the eternal harbor is not for mere sermon-hearers, nice neighbors, or religious hobbyists. It is offered to them through repentance of their sin and faith in Jesus Christ, but it is only possessed by those who love God and are called according to his purposes.

God Meets His Conditions

Does this make our salvation conditional? Some aspects of salvation are; some not. God elects unconditionally (Ephesians 1:4–5). He causes us to be born again unconditionally (John 3:7–8; Titus 3:5). Other conditions that we experience below — repentance, faith, love, holiness, and so on — God gives or empowers his people to meet.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12–13)

And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:27)

An ocean exists between preaching a works-based religion (a false religion) and preaching God’s utter, sovereign grace in our salvation along with his warnings and conditions. We must preach the latter. Everyone is not a Christian who sits in a pew; everyone is not on a Christian journey; everyone is not a child of God; everyone is not a recipient of every kind word of Scripture because they chose to come to church that Sunday. We must not lie and flatter, casting gospel pearls indiscriminately before swine.

Innocent

Charles Spurgeon once said from his own watchtower,

Our ministry ought always to be a killing as well as a healing one — a ministry which kills all false hopes, blights all wrong confidences, and weeds out all foolish trusts, while at the same time it trains up the feeblest shoot of real hope, and tends comfort and encouragement even to the weakest of the sincere followers of Christ. Do not, then, be needlessly alarmed about our ministry. Just give us plenty of elbow-room to strike right and left. . . . To our own Master we stand or fall, but to no one else in heaven or on earth. (The Weeding of the Garden)

Men of God, put forth the Lord Jesus Christ in all his beauty; lift their souls to the gates of glory. Be the man to tarry in God’s presence, a man who can train up the feeblest shoot of real hope, declaring, Behold your God! And love their souls enough, love Christ enough, love God’s word enough to wound proud unbelief, favorite sins, and respectable worldliness — to kill false hopes, blight all wrong confidences, and weed out foolish trusts.

You do not have to be your people’s best friend, but you need to be their pastor. You have a high and noble office. Do not shrink back because God’s remedies are sometimes rougher than you (and your people) would prefer. Handle the promises with care, speak plainly with them about sin as you point repeatedly to the all-sufficient Savior. And be free from assuming you’ve been arrogant because you find yourself asking Paul’s question, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” (Galatians 4:16).

We are watchmen of souls. At times, we will misjudge or overreact or raise the alarm at shadows we thought were soldiers — ask for forgiveness. As far as it goes with you, perform the watchman’s work with joy and sobriety as those who will soon come down from the tower to give an account for how you kept watch over souls. May we be able to truthfully say on that day, “I am innocent of the blood of all.”

Yesterday in The New York Times, there was an article about a picture taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, which launched two and a half years ago and currently orbits around the sun about a million miles from Earth. The picture is of a vast stretch of galaxies, and right near the bottom is a perfectly framed question mark formed by a pair of giant dust clouds.

Now, this was quite an energizing providence to me for today’s message. Not because I’m going to talk about astronomy, but because the last paragraph of the article filled me with a sense of sadness, urgency, and wonder that I get to talk to you about the Creator of this universe and his purposes for this church and Dana Olson’s family.

The author of the article, Dennis Overbye, closes like this:

We’ve barely begun to know anything — that’s why we build telescopes. Once the Webb has completed its rounds of investigations two decades from now, we might know a bit more about how this bowl of stars works. But we still won’t know why we are here. That question mark, our profound cosmic ignorance, is one of the great gifts of science.

So, the great gift of science is to underline the “profound . . . ignorance” that we do not know why we exist.

If that were the gift of science (and I don’t believe it is), it would be not a gift, but a curse. To wake up every morning and have to say, “I have no idea why I exist” — that is not a gift. It is a curse. And millions of people are taught to live under this curse.

But we — we who have been born again “through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23) — we know why we exist. We exist to know and enjoy and reflect the glory of our Creator and Redeemer, especially the glory of his sovereign, sustaining grace.

What Is Sovereign, Sustaining Grace?

What is God’s sovereign, sustaining grace? Where does God make plain that this is our portion? That’s my focus in this message. Let me give you a rhyming definition to illustrate what I mean from experience, and then I’ll show its meaning from the word.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,     Nor flight from all distress, but this:The grace that orders our trouble and pain,     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

I stress this because to celebrate a grace that bars what is not bliss, and gives flight from all distress, and does not order our pain — that grace would be biblically false and experientially unrealistic.

Our experiences and the Bible teach us that grace does not prevent pain, but orders, and arranges, and measures out our pain, and then in the darkness is there to sustain. Grace will one day banish all pain. But not yet.

Scarred by Grace

For example, years ago Bob Ricker was the president of the Baptist General Conference. He spoke at his daughter’s wedding. He pointed to some small scars on her neck and called them memorials of God’s grace — his sovereign, sustaining grace.

She had been in a car accident. Her injury prevented her from breathing right there at the scene of the accident. In the car behind her was a doctor who happened to have an air tube in his pocket. By the time he got to her, she was already turning blue. He forced the tube into her throat and saved her life. At her wedding a few years later, Bob told her: those scars you have to live with — they are memorials of sustaining grace.

Now, Bob Ricker is not naive. He knows that if God can ordain that in the car behind there be a doctor, and that this doctor have a breathing apparatus in his pocket, and that he have the presence of mind to use it savingly, then this God is fully able to prevent the accident in the first place. This is the God of whom Paul said in Ephesians 1:11, “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Bob even stressed, “‘All things’ means all things” — including, I assume, the paths of cars and airplanes and arrows and bullets and chromosomes and cancer cells. That was the inspiration for my little rhyming definition of sovereign, sustaining grace.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,     Nor flight from all distress, but this:The grace that orders our trouble and pain,     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

The God Above the Farmer

Here’s another story of grace, which I confirmed with Noël in the car yesterday driving over from Minneapolis. Noël, Abraham, Barnabas, and Talitha were traveling to Georgia, and the car broke down on a lonely stretch about an hour south of Indianapolis. The radiator was shot.

“Grace does not prevent pain, but orders, and arranges, and measures out our pain.”

A farmer in his mid-sixties pulled over and offered help. Noël said that she supposed they needed a motel and hoped that Monday morning there would be a garage open to work on the car. The farmer said, “Would you like to stay with me and my wife?” Noël hesitated. He said, “The Lord said that when we serve others, it’s like serving him.” He called his wife to get the okay and added, “You could go to church with us in the morning, if you can take a Baptist church.”

So, they stayed with the farmer — who was also an aviation mechanic that diagnosed the problem, drove to town Monday morning, bought a new radiator, came back, put it in at no expense, and sent the family on their way. In the meantime, Barnabas had pulled his fishing rod out of the car and caught a nineteen-inch catfish — the icing on the cake. Spectacular, sovereign, sustaining grace.

The God who can cause a farmer to stop to help Noël, and who sees to it that he is a Christian (even a Baptist!), and that he and his wife have room for the family to stay, and that he is a mechanic, and that he finds a radiator first thing Monday morning, and that he is willing to take the time, and that he has a pond with catfish — this God is perfectly able to keep a radiator from bursting open in the middle of Indiana. But in this fallen world of futility, that is not usually the way sustaining grace works. It does not always spare us frustrations and disappointments and losses.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,     Nor flight from all distress, but this:The grace that orders our trouble and pain,     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

Responding Like Paul

A young man in our church who was dealing with a physical condition that did not get better in spite of prayer said to me, “It would be easier if Jesus hadn’t healed, but instead had given grace to endure the absence of healing.” One of the things I said to him was this: “That’s exactly what Jesus did do — and for that very reason — in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10.”

God’s grace ordained that Paul have a thorn in the flesh for the sake of his humility, and then he does not remove it in answer to prayer. Instead, God says, “My [sovereign, sustaining] grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

To which Paul responds, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,     Nor flight from all distress, but this:The grace that orders our trouble and pain,     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.

Grace Abounds Even in Babylon

Our text in Jeremiah 32 is about this kind of sovereign, sustaining grace and holds the key to why Faith Baptist Fellowship exists after 44 years, and to why Dana and Christa and the girls served so faithfully.

Jerusalem and God’s chosen people are in darkness and distress, and it is God himself who has ordered it so. Look at verse 36: “Now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, ‘It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence.’” That’s what those outside of Israel are saying, and it is true. Grace has not spared them this calamity. Nor will the grace of God spare you your appointed calamity. He will spare you many sorrows, but not all.

But what they say about God’s chosen ones is not the last word. God has the last word. And it is a word of sovereign, sustaining grace. Verse 37: “Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety.”

So, God declares that he has ordered the trouble and pain: I have driven them to these foreign lands. And he declares that he himself will deliver them and bring them back to himself and to their land. In other words, sovereign grace will eventually triumph over the calamity.

What Makes Us Saints So Sure?

How can we be sure of this triumph of grace in our lives, our churches, our souls? It is one question to ask, Why has Faith Baptist Fellowship endured for 44 years? But an even more urgent question is, How can we be sure that grace will triumph for this church and in our own lives in the future? How can you be sure that grace will sustain you to the end in the faith and holiness that brings you safe to heaven?

That’s what the rest of this text is about. The answer is sustaining grace for God’s chosen people is sovereign grace. That is, sustaining grace is omnipotent grace. It is grace that overcomes all obstacles and preserves the faith and holiness that bring us home to heaven. This is our only sure confidence for the future. You and I, in ourselves, are utterly fickle and unreliable. If we were left to our own powers to persevere, we would make shipwreck of our faith. It is sure. This is why the saints have prayed and sung for centuries,

Oh, to grace how great a debtorDaily I’m constrained to be!Let thy goodness, like a fetter,Bind my wandering heart to thee.Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,Prone to leave the God I love;Here’s my heart; Oh, take and seal it;Seal it for thy courts above.

Is that the way saints should pray? Is that the way to pray for your future and for Dana’s future and for this church’s future? Is that a biblical way to pray?

Make your goodness like a fetter — a chain — that binds my wandering heart to you. Seal my heart with an unbreakable bond for the courts of heaven. In other words, keep me! Preserve me! Defeat every rising rebellion! Overcome every niggling doubt! Deliver from every destructive temptation! Nullify every fatal allurement! Expose every demonic deception! Tear down every arrogant argument! Shape me! Incline me! Hold me! Master me! Do whatever you must do to keep me trusting you and fearing you till Jesus comes or calls.

May we — should we — pray and sing like that?

Four Promises of Sovereign, Sustaining Grace

The answer from this text is yes. That kind of singing and praying is rooted in the new-covenant promise of sovereign, sustaining grace. Let’s read it. Keep in mind that this is one of several Old Testament promises of the new covenant that Jesus said he sealed with his own blood for all who are in him. It is not just for Jews, but for those who are true Jews by virtue of union with Jesus, the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:7, 16). Jeremiah 32:38–41 says,

They shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

Notice four promises of sovereign, sustaining grace.

1. God will be our God.

God promises to be our God. Verse 38: “They shall be my people, and I will be their God.” All the promises to his people are summed up in this: “I will be your God.” That is, “I will use all that I am as God — all my wisdom, all my power, and all my love — to see to it that you remain my people. All that I am as God, I exert for your good.”

2. God will change our hearts.

God promises to change our hearts and cause us to love and fear him. Verses 39–40: “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever. . . . I will put the fear of me in their hearts.” In other words, God will not simply stand by to see if we, by our own powers, will fear him. He will sovereignly, supremely, mercifully give us the heart that we need to have, and give us the faith and the fear of God that will lead us home to heaven. This is sovereign, sustaining grace. (See also Deuteronomy 30:6 and Ezekiel 11:19–20; 36:27.)

3. God will not let us turn away.

God promises that he will not turn away from us and that we will not turn away from him. Verse 40: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” In other words, his heart-work is so powerful that he guarantees we will not turn from him. This is what’s new about the new covenant: God promises to fulfill by his power the conditions that we have to meet. We must fear him and love him and trust him. And he says, “I will see to that. I will ‘put the fear of me in their hearts’ — not to see what they will do with it, but in such a way that ‘they may not turn from me.’” This is sovereign, sustaining grace.

4. God will do this with infinite intensity.

Finally, God promises to do this with the greatest intensity imaginable. He expresses this in two ways, once at the beginning and once at the end of verse 41: “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” First, he says that he will exert this sovereign, sustaining grace with joy: “I will rejoice in doing them good.” Then he says (at the end of verse 41) that he will exert this sovereign, sustaining grace “with all [his] heart and all [his] soul.”

How Great Is God’s Desire to Do You Good?

He rejoices to sustain you, and he rejoices with all his heart and with all his soul. Now, I ask you, not with any sermonic exaggeration, or with any rhetorical flourish, or with any sense of overstatement at all — I ask you, I challenge you, can you conceive of an intensity of desire that is greater than a desire empowered by “all [God’s] heart and all [God’s] soul”?

Suppose you took all the desire for food and sex and money and fame and power and meaning and friends and security in the hearts and souls of all the human beings on the earth — say, about eight billion people — and you put all that desire, multiplied by all those eight billion hearts and souls, into a container. How would it compare to the desire of God to do you good implied in the words “with all [his] heart and all [his] soul”? It would compare like a thimble to the Pacific Ocean, because the heart and soul of God are infinite, and the hearts and souls of man are finite. There is no intensity greater than the intensity of “all [God’s] heart and all [God’s] soul.”

“Grace will one day banish all pain. But not yet.”

And that is the intensity of the joy he has in sustaining you with sovereign grace: “I will rejoice in doing them good . . . with all my heart and all my soul.” Some of you may be tasting the sweetness of such sovereign, sustaining grace for the first time this morning. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, and I urge you to yield to it and be mastered by sovereign, sustaining grace.

Others of you have lived in this sweet assurance for decades. It has sovereignly sustained you in the worst and best of times. Pain has not pushed you into bitterness; pleasure has not lured you into idolatry; God has kept you. He has held you fast — with all his heart and all his soul.

He has done it for your church, and he has done it for Dana and Christa and Anna and Mary and Betsy, and he will — with all his heart and all his soul. This is sovereign, sustaining grace. To know it, rejoice in it, and reflect it is why you exist.

Not grace to bar what is not bliss,     Nor flight from all distress, but this:The grace that orders our trouble and pain,     And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.However long the sorrows last,     This mighty grace will hold you fast.

On an overcast day in August 2013, I stood in the churchyard of St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, Scotland, staring at the gravestone of Robert Murray M’Cheyne. As I did, I felt a surge of emotion that transported me 24 years into the past and 3,700 miles west, back to the moment I first met the godly young man whose remains lay buried beneath my feet.

The moment occurred in a makeshift bookstore when I was 23 years old. The church my wife and I had begun attending had just hosted a pastors’ conference and had kindly left the book tables up to give us regular folk a chance to pick through the literary leftovers.

As I was browsing, I came upon a small greenish book titled Robert Murray M’Cheyne. It was authored by a nineteenth-century Scottish pastor I had never heard of (Andrew Bonar) and recorded the life of another nineteenth-century Scottish pastor I had never heard of. I knew next to nothing about Scottish history, let alone Scottish Christian history, so I don’t remember what moved me to buy that book. But I did.

And I am profoundly grateful that I did. Because the godly young man I came to know in the pages of that book shaped me in ways few others have. I even named our first dog after him.

Death to Remember

Robert Murray M’Cheyne was born on May 21, 1813. But like many who lived before the advancements in medicine we now take for granted, M’Cheyne wasn’t long for this world. He died of typhus on March 25, 1843, before reaching his thirtieth birthday.

The day his frail body was laid to rest in St. Peter’s churchyard — the church he had pastored for a mere six and a half years — seven thousand people showed up to honor his memory, grieve their sense of profound loss, and thank God for the grace they received through him. That alone speaks volumes of the kind of man M’Cheyne was.

It is remarkable how God so often uses a death to stop his people in their tracks and force them to think seriously about what life and death truly mean. In fact, that’s precisely what he did with M’Cheyne twelve years earlier.

Life-Changing Death

At age eighteen, M’Cheyne was a bright honor student of classic literature at the University of Edinburgh who fully enjoyed the partying scene of his day. Having been raised attending church, M’Cheyne considered himself a Christian, but he was a Christian of the nineteenth-century Scottish “Bible Belt” variety. He professed faith in Christ, but his heart really loved the worldly delights of his intellectual pursuits and active social life. That is, until he was throttled by a death.

In the summer of 1831, his beloved older brother David succumbed to a deep depression that quickly wore him down in body and soul. His body didn’t survive the ordeal, but by God’s grace, his soul did. In the days before his death, David found profound peace in Jesus’s atoning death for him. His face seemed to shine with an inner radiance.

Robert was gripped both by the grief of his devastating loss and by his brother’s spiritual transformation. And God used this terrible event to bring about Robert’s own spiritual transformation.

In the fall after David’s death, Robert enrolled in the University of Edinburgh’s Divinity Hall, where, over the course of several months, he too was born again to a living hope. There he studied under, among others, the great evangelical pastor-scholar Thomas Chalmers, and he forged deep, lasting friendships with other godly young men — Andrew Bonar being perhaps his closest.

Over the next few years, Robert experienced a profound growth in grace, developing a burning passion for the Scriptures, personal holiness, and evangelism that would characterize him for the rest of his brief life. But as true as that description is, it doesn’t explain why less than twelve years later, seven thousand showed up to his funeral, and why I’m still talking about him 34 years after reading his brief memoir a century and a half after his death.

He Had Been with Jesus

The truth is, it’s impossible for me to capture the power of M’Cheyne’s life in a brief bio sketch and a few quotes, though he said and wrote some beautiful and memorable lines. You may have heard a few of them quoted, such as this well-known excerpt gleaned from one of his personal letters:

Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams. (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 293)

While words like these give us a small glimpse into his great soul, the real power of this quote comes from knowing the soul from which it came, as evidenced in how he really lived. M’Cheyne’s enduring impact on me wasn’t so much what he said, but who he was: a truly holy man.

If such a description sounds more off-putting than attractive, it may be because we have the wrong connotations associated with holiness, such as sanctimonious, “holier than thou” aloofness — which is not true Christian holiness. For as John Piper says, “Human holiness is nothing other than a God-besotted life.”

That’s what M’Cheyne was: a God-besotted man, a God-enthralled man. What I found so captivating about him was how captivated he was by Jesus. He was on fire, but not with mere zeal. His heart burned with holy divine love, the kind that is ignited only when one is truly near the holy Fire that burns but doesn’t consume.

We can debate for decades over apologetic arguments and textual criticism. We can doubt and wrestle with endless questions. But we can often discern in minutes when we encounter someone who has encountered the Real Thing.

That’s what makes M’Cheyne so compelling. He was a man who had encountered the Light of the World, and he radiated that Light of Life to everyone around him, from the educated and erudite to those in the slums of Edinburgh to the working-class residents of Dundee, where he so briefly pastored. He was “a burning and shining lamp,” and his people had “[rejoiced] for a while in his light” (John 5:35) because they recognized that this young man “had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Life to Remember

That’s why thousands were drawn to St. Peter’s churchyard in March of 1843 and why I was drawn there 170 years later: this young man’s life is worth remembering.

For those who knew him, their gratitude was laced with deep grief because to lose a burning and shining lamp in a dark world is a great loss. His dear friend Andrew Bonar captured what many were feeling that day when he said, “Never, never yet in all my life have I felt anything like this: It is a blow to myself, to his people, to the church of Christ in Scotland.” And yet to have glimpsed the Light in the lamp — the Light we long most to see — is a great, gracious gain.

And thanks to that same dear friend’s labor of love in publishing M’Cheyne’s memoir and the few literary remains he left behind, untold thousands in the generations since have been able to experience this great, gracious gain. What a gift it has been! Of the book, the great Charles Spurgeon said,

This is one of the best and most profitable volumes ever published. The memoir of such a man ought surely to be in the hands of every Christian and certainly every preacher of the Gospel. (Bonar, Robert Murray M’Cheyne)

I am no Spurgeon, but I can tell you that the young man I met in the small greenish book 34 years ago is worth knowing — and remembering. I don’t know if you’ll end up naming your dog after him, but I expect you will join me thanking God for the day you opened the book and glimpsed the burning and shining Light that filled Robert Murray M’Cheyne.

ABSTRACT: In today’s intellectual milieu, pride and sloth are the two chief interpretive vices. Partisan pride protects its beliefs behind the shield of identity politics, while systemic sloth shrugs indifferently at the pursuit of truth itself. In response, today’s Bible interpreters need more than the right kind of method; they need to be the right kind of people: readers marked by interpretive virtue rather than interpretive vice. With boldness, they oppose systemic sloth and proclaim what God has said. At the same time, with humility, they resist partisan pride and remain humbly open to correction. Meanwhile, local churches have the opportunity to become cultures of virtuous reading, places that form Bible readers to be people of interpretive virtue.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Kevin Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to describe a hermeneutics of boldness and humility.

Of the writing of books about reading the Bible there appears to be no end. Twenty-five years ago, I published one such book: Is There a Meaning in this Text? The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge.1 It was the high noon of postmodern theory, and I wanted to provide a Christian alternative to two deadly sins of interpretation: modern pride (a too confident belief in reason, truth, and method) and postmodern sloth (a too dubious disbelief).

I believed then — as I still do — that biblical Christianity, by definition, depends on being “biblical,” that being biblical requires a high view of Scripture and the wisdom to read it rightly, that reading rightly is challenging in every age, and that reading rightly requires you to be more of a saint than a scholar.2 I also believe that fulfilling Jesus’s Great Commission to make disciples of all nations involves helping Jesus’s followers to follow God’s word where it leads with minds and hearts, thus becoming readers and doers.

There is a place for exegetical methods in learning to read the Bible rightly, but even heretics may know how to parse verbs, diagram sentences, and so forth. Methods alone are no guarantee of truth, which is why I ended my hermeneutics text with a section on the importance of humility and conviction — qualities of the reader, not steps in an impersonal process.

From Intellectual to Interpretive Virtue

Hermeneutics may be “the science of textual interpretation,” but good reading, like good science, requires readers to have certain personal qualities. So does good knowing, as I discovered in Linda Zagzebski’s Virtues of the Mind.3 I knew about moral virtues — characteristic traits and habits of a “good” person — but even though I studied philosophy in college, I had never heard of intellectual virtues. Opinion became knowledge (so I was taught) thanks to the process of justification. By way of contrast, Zagzebski defined knowledge as what a person attains by acting with intellectual virtue (“a state of cognitive contact with reality arising out of acts of intellectual virtue”).4 Intellectual virtues are habits of thinking that lead to truth rather than away from it, habits that accord with the mind’s “design plan,” the way it should work in order to achieve its proper good: knowledge.5 Put simply, an intellectual virtue is what leads to an intellectual good.6

My proposal (which I believe was the first to make explicit mention of interpretive virtues7) was similar: an “interpretive virtue” is a personal characteristic or habit that leads readers to the interpretive good of understanding. It all starts with a heartfelt desire for the interpretive good of understanding: “making cognitive contact with the meaning of the text.”8 Good readers respect both the author’s intention and what is objectively there in the text rather than trying to come up with self-serving interpretations.

Reading relates to virtue in two distinct ways. Some people read the Bible (the proverbial “good book”) for the sake of virtue formation. William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues is a compilation of hundreds of character-building stories whose tales help children and others learn the importance of moral traits like self-discipline, loyalty, and compassion.9 Karen Swallow Prior does something similar in her book On Reading Well, pairing classic novels with virtues (e.g., Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and justice, or Shusaku Endo’s Silence and faith).10 Prior knows there is a difference between reading for moral virtue and reading virtuously, and she deals with the latter in her introduction: “Reading virtuously means, first, reading closely, being faithful to both text and context, interpreting accurately and insightfully.”11 We can read about virtue, and we can also practice virtue while reading.

The latter possibility is our concern here. The key premise should be obvious: how you read is related to the kind of person you are. When it comes to hermeneutics, the who (the kind of person you are) is as important or even more important than the what (the particular method you use).

To avoid modern interpretive pride, our certainty must be tempered by hermeneutic humility; to avoid interpretive sloth, our skepticism must be tempered by hermeneutic conviction. Both boldness and humility are appropriate in biblical interpretation because, as James Eglinton observes, the form of theology must be suited to the subject matter.12 A theologian’s voice must be bold when reporting what God has said, and modest when claiming to say what it means: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

The Situation Today: An Old and New Challenge

Getting the delicate balance right of a hermeneutics of humility and conviction is more important than ever. Pride and sloth remain the chief interpretive vices, infecting yet another generation, even if 25 years on they have mutated somewhat to adapt to a new cultural situation. Pride now expresses itself as uncritical partisanship that breeds distrust; sloth has developed into systemic skepticism, cynicism, and apathy.

Bonnie Kristian’s Untrustworthy calls out the knowledge crisis that, in the words of her subtitle, is “polluting our politics and corrupting Christian community.”13 Americans no longer trust experts or institutions — unless they agree with their identity politics. Instead of giving reasons for what one believes, one has simply to wrap oneself in the mantle of one’s identity (e.g., “Speaking as an X”). This is what I mean by partisan pride — the idea that me and my tribe are in a special position to know. Unfortunately, if you disagree, you become my antagonist: “Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B.”14 To a proud partisan, every disagreement is a hostile act. You are either for or against me; there is no neutral third space for impartial dialogue — or rationality.15

Partisan pride does not need to listen to others; it already knows. Partisan pride is not only tribal but destructive of true democracy. In a culture of identity politics and partisan pride, people on the other side of the aisle — whether in Congress or in church — are not interlocutors, but potential enemies. It’s not even safe to talk about the weather anymore, at least not if you connect the dots between record flooding and climate change. A Chicago Tribune headline declares, “Meteorologists Feeling the Heat from Viewers.”16 Forecasters are without honor in their hometowns. Apparently, whether or not you trust your local weatherman is a function of your party politics.

Twenty-five years ago, I suggested that sloth was the signature temptation of postmodern theorists. Since then, however, the suspicion that truth claims are in fact power plays has become something of a fixture in public consciousness, resulting in systemic skepticism and cynicism — an inability to trust or believe in anything or anyone: “Whereas pride claims knowledge prematurely, sloth prematurely claims the impossibility of literary knowledge.”17 Postmodern suspicion has spread, like a virus, from the labs of French literary theory to Main Street.

To think that no one is in a position to know what texts, including the Bible, really mean is disheartening. Why begin to climb a mountain if you know you’ll never make it to the top? Why start a game of chess if you know the best-case scenario is a stalemate? What began as a hermeneutics of suspicion has developed into systemic skepticism, and it breeds what theologian Uche Anizor calls a “culture of apathy,” which does not merely tolerate but nurtures “an attitude of indifference” toward what used to be important.18 What distresses Anizor is the extent to which this attitude of indifference, even toward spiritual things and biblical truth, has become normal.

The partisan pride and systemic sloth that characterize contemporary culture had a long gestation period. In America’s Book, Mark Noll identifies 1844–1865 as a particularly momentous period because debates over slavery “signaled the end of a civilization premised on white Protestant scriptural agreement.”19 In three consecutive chapters, each entitled “Whose Bible?” Noll shows how conflicts over whose reading of the Bible’s position on slavery was right eventually led people to think that every appeal to Scripture was politically motivated.20 Ironically, partisan pride fueled systemic sloth; interpretive sin feeds off itself.

The Civil War was not the first time disagreements over what the Bible says triggered a political and theological crisis. Christians in the early church had to contend with Gnostics and other heretics, all of whom claimed to be reading the Bible rightly. How should Christians cope with competing visions of biblical Christianity? The interpretive virtues were born for such a time as this.

In Praise of Boldness (But Not Too Much)

Martin Luther is the epitome of interpretive boldness. In the presence of the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, on trial for heresy, he was asked, “Martin, how can you assume that you are the only one to understand Scripture?” Luther had the courage of his convictions, but he was also open to being shown — from the Bible, not human tradition — that he was wrong. Of course, like other virtues, boldness sits on a spectrum between opposite vices and therefore needs to be regulated. Someone else might have caved to the pressure, manifesting interpretive cowardice, not boldness. Alternatively, it is possible to have too much of a good thing: an unregulated boldness leads to rashness, foolhardiness, and, at the limit, begins to resemble the ugly partisan pride that esteems one’s own interpretations only.

Luther’s response at Worms also serves as an example of what the French philosopher Michel Foucault says about courageous speech (parrhesia) in a series of lectures later published as a book, Fearless Speech, whose original French title, Le Courage de la Vérité, means “The Courage of Truth.”21 Foucault discovers bold or fearless speech (parrhesia) in ancient Greece, where it was held to be an essential virtue for democracy. Foucault contrasts boldness of speech with other types of discourse, such as flattery and sophistry. What sets parrhesia apart is its commitment to speak the truth, even when it is dangerous or unpopular to do so.

This brings us back to weathermen and other scientists, environmental or not, who seek to speak truth to power in service to the public interest. When Tyrone Hayes found evidence that Syngenta’s pesticide atrazine was harmful, the corporation’s public relations department attempted to discredit his research. Hayes persevered with his work, insisting, “Science is a principle and a process of seeking truth. Truth cannot be purchased.”22 This observation did not stop tobacco companies from going to great lengths to suppress the publication of negative data about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. As one ethicist notes, “Individual scientists rarely have the resources or strength to withstand such assaults.”23

Foucault was impressed by the Stoics’ willingness to suffer for their fearless truth-speaking (parrhesia) rather than betray their convictions. The early Christians, in particular the speech acts of the apostles in the book of Acts, are an even better example. Peter, John, Stephen, and eventually Paul all speak gospel truth to imperial power. Their fearless speech is one of the narrative highlights: “Now when they saw the boldness [parrhesia] of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished” (Acts 4:13).

Acts 4 records the arrest of Peter and John for proclaiming the resurrection of the dead. After being charged not to speak of Jesus, they are released, though they know the threat of persecution hangs over them. What else can they do but pray? “Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). Their prayers are answered: they are filled with the Holy Spirit, who encourages them to speak with boldness (Acts 4:31). According to the New Testament, this boldness of speech is more than a character trait: it is a divine gift in response to prayer. Significantly, throughout the rest of the book, until the very end, various apostles continue to speak boldly of the gospel and their hope in Christ (Acts 9:27–28; 13:46; 14:3; 18:26; 19:8; 26:26; 28:31).24

Contemporary biblical interpreters have, like the apostle Paul, been “entrusted with the gospel” (Galatians 2:7; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Timothy 1:11). Like Paul, biblical interpreters may have to speak gospel truth to the powers and the general populace, and they do well to pray to the Spirit for the strength to do so. However, unlike Paul, biblical interpreters today lack the qualifications and authority commensurate with apostolicity.25 Even the Reformers couldn’t claim to have the authorized interpretation of “This is my body” (Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; cf. 1 Corinthians 11:24), which is why the conflict of Protestant interpretations is so painful.26 Each Reformer was presumably illumined by the Spirit, a responsible exegete, and a man of sincere conviction — and yet they disagreed about the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper.

While it is clear from the book of Acts that boldness of speech is one of the principal means the Spirit uses to build up the church, it is also important to remember that boldness is not rashness. Nor is Christian boldness of speech a rhetorical technique. Rather, it is a personal quality: a willingness to put not simply one’s words, but oneself — one’s very life — on the line. The other early Christian witnesses were not mere orators, but martyrs: their willingness to suffer and die for their truth convictions was an embodied extension of their bold speech.

In Praise of Humility: Power in Weakness

Biblical interpreters must display boldness whenever the truth about the God of the gospel and the gospel of God are at stake. Bold speech is appropriate when we are witnessing to what God has done in Jesus Christ for us and our salvation. However, it is one thing to witness to what God has said and done, another to explain its significance. Jesus said, “This is my body,” yes — but what exactly did he mean? Pastor-theologians must speak boldly when witnessing to what God has done and what the biblical authors have said, but modestly when unpacking their implications.

As Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas knew, “Virtues cannot exist atomistically: in order to possess a single virtue, one must possess the virtues in their entirety.”27 The reason should be obvious. Without some counterweight, boldness easily slips into brashness, recklessness, or, at the limit, partisan pride.

Humble people (1) view themselves accurately, (2) consider others and not just themselves, and (3) are open to the possibility of being wrong.28 All three are crucial qualities for biblical interpreters. We must acknowledge, first, that we are situated in a particular place, time, and culture. Our finitude affects what we see in texts, as does our fallenness (even as a high school soccer player, I knew the other team were not the only ones committing fouls). Our situatedness inclines us to privilege evidence that confirms our biases. Grant Osborne states matter-of-factly, “We rarely read the Bible to discover truth; more often, we wish to harmonize it with our belief system.”29 Second, to be a person of “interpretive conscientiousness”30 we must acknowledge that other interpreters may be trying as hard as we are to read the Bible well. This leads, third, to an acknowledgement that we may misinterpret or misunderstand what the biblical authors have said. Without such interpretive humility, the idea of “always being reformed” (by the word of God) is only an empty promise.

Humility is, of course, a prime Christian virtue.31 Paul urges the Philippians to have the mind of Christ, namely, the disposition to “count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). And there’s the rub. Humility — the willingness to listen and attend to the interests of others — is hard, because it may mean putting something in ourselves to death. This is precisely the way Jesus humbled himself, “becoming obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8).

For a reader with Christian convictions, admitting that one’s interpretation may not be ironclad — or worse, that it may be wrong — is painful. This is why I so admire Augustine, whose Retractions surveys his publications and fesses up as to where he made mistakes. Augustine viewed himself accurately: this side of the eschaton, our knowledge is only partial (1 Corinthians 13:12). As Bonnie Kristian quips, now we know in part, “and often a smaller part than we imagine.”32

Interpretive humility is a first cousin to epistemic humility, the awareness that though objective meaning and truth exist, our grasp of them may be tenuous. Interpretive humility means being ready to admit that there may be meaning in the text that we have failed to see. There is a difference between feeling that our interpretations are right and being right. This gap is precisely why wise readers are prepared to listen to other readers and be open to correction. Sadly, when in the course of writing a book on critical thinking Adam Grant wanted an example of people more interested in protecting beliefs than in being right, he decided on the preacher, whom he contrasted with the open-minded scientist.33 The ability to rethink, and to be always reforming, “starts with intellectual humility — knowing what we don’t know.”34

“Pride goes before destruction” (Proverbs 16:18). It also preempts instruction. Pride is the preeminent interpretive vice, a guarantee that readers will be inclined to follow their own train of thought, not the biblical authors’. Conversely, humility is the prime interpretive virtue, an essential condition for displaying the mind of Christ. In an age marked by partisan pride and its reactionary opposite, systemic sloth, it is more important than ever for biblical interpreters to hold interpretive boldness and interpretive humility in balanced tension.

When the Corinthians challenged Paul’s apostolic credentials, the proof that Christ was speaking in him was a power paradoxically manifested through weakness (2 Corinthians 13:3–4). The endurance of faith, the pain of perseverance, demands both humility and boldness. Biblical interpreters must be willing to expose their readings and themselves to the conflict of interpretations, and to do so not to prove themselves right, but to attain to truth. This is as true on the corporate level as it is on the individual. The church in the West needs humility to listen to the global church — and to earlier generations of Christian readers.35 Modern methods and technology have not necessarily made Western Christians better readers.

The Local Church as Virtuous Reading Culture

It is good to teach students how to read the Bible in the original languages and to attend to grammar and historical context. Yet it is one thing to acquire knowledge and learn skills, quite another to acquire virtue and learn Christ. This is less a slam on the grammatical-historical method than a reminder: a tool is only as effective as the person wielding it.36

The acid test for any hermeneutic is how it prepares readers to handle interpretive disagreements, such as the doctrinal differences that have divided evangelical Protestants.37 A virtue hermeneutic that holds boldness and humility in tension will not resolve every doctrinal disagreement, but it may help Christians to navigate their way through the conflict of interpretations without going to war with one another.

Church leaders must be bold enough to be “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2), and humble enough to be teachable (Proverbs 5:12–13). So must interpretive traditions. As members of what is ultimately one body, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and others must be willing to entertain the possibility that the Spirit may be using insights from other interpretive traditions to correct their respective blind spots.

We read to our children from their earliest ages, and then we teach them to read. Or do we? Textual understanding involves more than deciphering black marks on white paper. Consciously or not, individuals and interpretive traditions are always modeling (or failing to model) virtuous interpretation. The local church ought to be a place to exhibit and foster virtuous reading cultures — a place that forms Bible readers and believers to be people of interpretive virtue. Other interpretive virtues, in addition to boldness and humility, are important too: attentiveness, patience, honesty, charity, fairness, and above all, wisdom, the virtue that helps you to discern when a situation calls for boldness and when it requires humility — when to stand fast, when to admit defeat, and when to compromise.

In our partisan, skeptical culture, it is all too easy to find fault with opposing propositions. It is harder to find fault with persons who read the Bible with conviction and humility in wise equipoise. May local churches become places where readers are formed not to be partisans of earthly kingdoms but martyrs of the kingdom of heaven, able to say with Luther, “Here I stand,” with a boldness tempered by an openness to being corrected. Learning how to embody these interpretive virtues is sanctification too — and perhaps the best way to proclaim biblical truth in a culture rife with partisan pride and systemic suspicion.

Audio Transcript

Last time we looked at joy. Is joy in God a choice we make, or is joy in God a feeling that just comes and goes? On Monday we saw that “joy in God is not a choice,” but “a God-given, spontaneous experience of the beauty, worth, and greatness of God.” That’s what you said, Pastor John. Joy is a gift, a supernatural gift — a divine awakening to true beauty.

And that leads to Dan’s question today. Dan is in Wheaton, Illinois. He writes, “Pastor John, I have greatly appreciated your emphasis on joy in the Christian life. Indeed, the psalmist tells us to ‘rejoice always.’ Paul describes himself as ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.’ Since the Bible commands us to have joy in God, are we in sin to the degree that we lack joy? Or could our lack of joy sometimes be the result of sin, but not a sin in itself?”

Whenever we’re dealing with the emotional dimension of the Christian life — which is most of it, I think — a simple yes or no answer is seldom adequate. I was thinking about why this is, and it might be helpful for me to just think out loud with Dan for a minute — why endless qualifications sometimes seem to be necessary.

Emotional Complexity

One is that words that refer to emotions are so flexible — because they carry meaning, but the name of an emotion has to correspond with your experience of the emotion because that’s the nature of emotions. Our experiences of emotions are so different, so the words, when we say them to each other, may not correspond to exactly the same thing.

For example, if you’ve never experienced anger, and I use the word anger, it just won’t carry meaning for you. The same thing would be true for pity, fear, guilt, lust, pride, greed, joy, admiration, hope, thankfulness — all of those. The hard words, the negative words, and the positive words — they all refer to experiences that you may not have or that you might have very differently from someone else. It’s hard to give simple answers regarding emotions when people’s meanings for the word corresponding to their experiences are so different.

Another reason that I feel like I’m always making qualifications when I give answers regarding the emotional life of the Christian is that our responses to comments about emotions are so different. I might say something in answer to this question, and a sensitive person might feel like I’m pointing out a defect in them that sends them into a tailspin of despondency, while another person might hear the very same word like water off a duck’s back because they’re not even touched by comments about their emotions at all.

A person who tries to answer a question about emotions has to be so discerning of who’s listening. Of course, I have zero control over that. I hope that people take to heart this complexity and cut me some slack.

Simple Answer with Qualifications

Anyway, here’s the simple answer and then endless qualifications. Since the Bible commands us to rejoice always, I think it is sinful not to. There’s my simple answer.

Jesus commands us to rejoice even in the hardest circumstances. “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” (Matthew 5:11–12). Not just when it’s easy, but when it’s flat-out seemingly impossible — do that.

“Christ wants us at all times to rejoice in him. It’s a Christian duty.”

Peter commands us to rejoice. “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings” (1 Peter 4:13). Paul commands us to rejoice. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). I take it that Christ wants us at all times to rejoice in him. It’s a Christian duty. If we fall short of that duty, it’s a sin.

Now, there’s my simple answer, and here come some qualifications. These are so crucial.

1. God calls us to weep.

The Bible says, for example, “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). In other words, compassion and empathy for others will modify at least the way you express your joy — if not the joy itself. There may be joy beneath your tears when you’re weeping with those who weep, but you don’t sing chipper songs to the grieving saint.

I just saw this for the first time in getting ready for this question, and it was very helpful for me to think about. James 4:9 says, when we sin, “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” So, what becomes of rejoicing at all times when you let your joy turn into gloom because you’ve been such a rat toward your employees that you need to repent — to God and to them? There are times — obviously from this text — when for the sake of recovered joy, fuller joy, we put away our cheerful demeanor and really experience a broken heart over our sin.

Now, my guess is that if Paul were having a conversation with James about this, I don’t think they would wind up disagreeing. I don’t think that James ultimately contradicts Paul’s command to rejoice always. Because at the bottom of our repenting — even in the very moment of our repenting — our repenting is owing to the fact that, at the root of our being, we’re totally convinced that God is all-satisfying, and we haven’t acted like he was. There’s this seed of joy in God that’s even giving rise to my brokenheartedness — that I haven’t experienced it to the full the way I should. That’s my first qualification.

2. We fall short in different ways.

Here’s the second one. As soon as I say joylessness is a sin, I realize that the resistance to the command to rejoice may be unbelievably diverse. Here’s a person who hears me say — or hears Paul say — “Rejoice always.” That person might say, “Who do you think you are, telling me to rejoice? Get out of my face.” Now, that’s one kind of disobedience.

Here’s another one. A person may say, “I want to, I really want to, but I can’t feel anything right now but the want to.” Another person might say, “I do. I do rejoice, but it’s so weak.” Now, all those three people, I think, are falling short of “rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” But what a difference between the kinds of falling short.

3. Personality types differ.

Here’s my last one, my last qualification for why the simple answer just can’t be left by itself. There are enormous differences in personality types. Eeyore — the gloomy, depressed, old gray donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh — is a real personality, and Puddleglum in The Chronicles of Narnia is a real personality type, and their experiences of joy are going to look so different from someone else’s, especially on Sunday morning during worship.

God’s Pleasure in His People

Here’s the last and most important qualification of all perhaps. It’s not really a qualification; it’s an encouragement. First Thessalonians 4:1 says that the Thessalonians are walking in a way that pleases God, and then he adds, now “do so more and more.” So, they can do better; they can do more. And yet they’re pleasing God.

In fact, Tony, I noticed — in the whole batch of questions you just sent me — lots of people struggling with what looks to me like a kind of perfectionism and obsessiveness. This text here addresses every one of those questions, I think, because it gives us a paradigm to know we can please God while not being as good as we should be.

“God has a huge capacity for sorting out the good fruit of our lives from the failings of our lives.”

They are pleasing God. Now do so more. Please him more. Go on more. There’s more that you can do. There are more things about the way you’re living that could become more fully pleasing to God. Which means — and here’s the massive encouragement — God has a huge capacity for sorting out the good fruit of our lives from the failings of our lives, and finding delight in the good while being displeased with the bad, and all the while never holding his children in contempt.

I think a lot of us feel like, “If God’s displeased with me, he’s just folding his arms and rolling his eyes and clucking his tongue. He’s just fed up with me.” That’s not true. That’s not the way he relates to his children. So, back to the beginning. Yes, let’s “rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Even in our shortcomings, there is reason to rejoice.