In your mind, what are the most appealing aspects of our churches for nonbelievers? Is it the personal invitation? The welcoming and thrilling atmosphere? The uniqueness and oddity of Christian worship?

When it comes to corporate worship, I’ve been a bit of a nomad. I grew up a missionary kid, and now have served both in American churches and overseas. I’ve seen the gamut of approaches. In Africa, I’ve been to a church without walls. Anyone nearby knows exactly what happens under that thatched roof. The bright colors of their Sunday best and the loud joy of West African believers sing the invitation, “Come and see our God!”

The gatherings in suburban America, by comparison, are walled in and so tucked away from their neighbors. They often rely on more creative efforts to make their presence known, like professional music, stage lights and smoke, seeker-focused sermons, and craft coffee. It’s still a “Come and see” strategy to reaching the lost but tries to bend worship to look and feel like the surrounding culture.

Still other churches emphasize sending. Sunday mornings are for the saints. While nonbelievers are certainly welcome, the emphasis is on going and telling. As they go out into the workforce and weekly rhythms of errands and bumping into neighbors or strangers, the saints share the good news of the gospel and invite nonbelievers to embrace Christ.

While none of these approaches is necessarily wrong, any one of them (by itself) may be missing how God means to draw people — and not only in the new covenant, but even in the old.

Wisdom of Israel

Moses delivered his final sermons to Israel as the people prepared to enter the long-awaited Promised Land. The western banks of the river meant, for Israel, the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (see Genesis 13:16–17; Deuteronomy 1:8). With God’s help, they would conquer the land, wipe out its idolatry, and become a blessing to all the peoples of the earth (Genesis 12:3).

Israel was called to be a holy people whose way of life reflected the righteousness of their God. Their obedience was meant to be a light to other nations.

Keep [these statutes and rules] and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” (Deuteronomy 4:6)

God’s law, his gift of grace to the Israelites, was designed to lead them in love toward him and toward one another (Deuteronomy 6:4–5; Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:37–40; Galatians 5:14). God desired their flourishing as a nation, as they walked with him in the righteousness for which he created them (Deuteronomy 4:7–8; 5:33). The people of Israel, centered on the worship of God (first at the tabernacle and then the temple), were never intended to be a reclusive nation tucked into that narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. They were meant to shine forth to the surrounding nations as an expression of the goodness of God.

As the surrounding nations watched this strange people, they would see the remarkable fruit of Israel’s two great loves and recognize them as a nation full of wisdom and understanding.

Wisdom of the Church

That’s how Israel drew the nations to God, but what about true Israel, the church? Hours before he went to the cross, Jesus took time with his disciples to prepare them for the events of his death and subsequent return to the Father. Like Moses, he gave them a commandment to follow as they began their boundary-crossing mission to the world.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35)

Jesus had just given them a dramatic display of the kind of love he was describing. During supper, he stood up, laid aside his outer garment, and washed their feet. The new commandment Jesus gave the disciples that night was a command to love as he loved.

“As your Teacher, I washed your feet. Go and do likewise.”

“As your Savior, I am laying down my life for the sake of yours. Go and do likewise.”

“Love one another with the same kind of love with which I have loved you.”

What wondrous love is this love of Christ? It is not the love demanded by so many today, which sets the self on center stage and requires unconditional acceptance. Neither is it the natural love that exists between friends or family or a married couple (see Matthew 5:46–47). It’s a distinct love, a unique love, a renewing, life-giving love that causes those who receive it, in the words of Augustine, to be “new men, heirs of the new covenant, singers of the new song” (Homilies on the Gospel of John, 65.1).

Jesus told his followers that as they loved one another in this way — in the same manner as he loved them, with the renewed love that he bestowed on them — the world would come to recognize that they were his disciples. This love stoops down in humility to serve and, if necessary, even to die. “This love like mine,” Jesus says in effect, “will be your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations.”

Gathered Together on Mission

Every time our churches gather — on Sundays, in small groups, and in a thousand informal ways throughout the week — we have an opportunity to put the love of God on display to a watching world. What will draw nonbelievers to God is not necessarily the welcoming and exciting atmosphere that can be curated with large meeting spaces and expansive budgets. Nor will it be mere evangelistic invitations. Rather, it will be the simple attractiveness of how his people love and keep loving. Concerning this, Augustine writes,

This is what he conferred upon us by loving us — that we would be bound together among ourselves by mutual love, and that by so sweet a bond and the reciprocity of its members that we would be the body of so great a head. (Homilies on the Gospel of John, 65.2)

This love cooks a meal for a tired and suffering family. It opens its home with the arms of welcome. It happily lingers after a worship service has ended, looking for burdens to bear and hearts to encourage. It prays in secret places, lifting others to God. It plans (and budgets) for the needs, expected and unexpected, that will come.

Ordinary Christian one-anothering is revelatory. When believers bear the fruit of love in how we relate to one another, it reveals that we are true children of God (1 John 3:10). It reveals who this God is and what he’s like. This means our mission doesn’t start when we scatter from our Sunday morning or midweek gatherings to our various homes and workplaces. When we gather and when we scatter, the church is on mission to display God’s love.

Ever since Eden, God has given children a crucial role in the coming of his kingdom. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring,” God told the serpent (Genesis 3:15). And so, ever since Eden, there has also been a long and desperate war on children.

The biblical story shows us just how ruthless this world’s anti-child forces can become: Pharaoh casting Israel’s sons in the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Demonic “gods” bidding parents to pass their children through fire (Jeremiah 19:4–5). Herod slaughtering Bethlehem’s boys (Matthew 2:16).

Our own society is not above such bloodshed: more than sixty million invisible headstones (from the last fifty years, and still counting) fill America’s fields. Much of the modern West’s aversion to children appears, however, in subtler forms. Today, we are having fewer children than ever, later than ever. We diminish, and sometimes outright despise, stay-at-home motherhood. And too often, we treat children as mere accessories to our individualism: valuable insofar as they buttress our personal identity and further our personal goals — otherwise, inconvenient.

As Christians, we may be tempted to assume that this war on children exists only out there. But even when we turn from the world of secular individualism and carefully consider ourselves — our hearts, our homes, our churches — we may find strange inclinations against children. We may discover that anti-child forces can hide in the most seemingly pro-child places. And we may realize, as Jesus’s disciples once did, that children need a larger place in our lives.

Pro-Child on Paper

As with most Christians today, the disciples of Jesus grew up in a largely pro-child culture. Their views of children may not have been as sentimental as ours sometimes are, but they knew kids played a key role in God’s purposes. They remembered God’s promise to send a serpent-crushing son (Genesis 3:15). They regularly recited the command to teach God’s word “diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9). They cherished God’s faithfulness to a thousand generations (Exodus 34:7).

But then, one day, some actual children approach the disciples. And as Jesus watches how his men respond, he feels an emotion nowhere else attributed to him in the Gospels: indignation.

They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant. (Mark 10:13–14)

The disciples likely had the best of intentions. To them, these children (or their parents) were acting inappropriately; they were coming at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Not now, children — the Master has business to attend to. They were about to discover, however, that far from distracting the Master from his business, children lay near the heart of the Master’s business.

In the process, they also warn us that claiming a pro-child position does not mean living a pro-child life. You can theoretically value children and practically neglect them. You can say on paper, “Let the children come,” while saying with your posture, “Let the children keep their distance.” You can look with disdain on the anti-child forces in the world and, meanwhile, overlook the precious children in your midst.

We, like the disciples, may hold pro-child positions. Our churches may have pro-child programs. But actually being pro-child requires far more than a position or a program: it requires the very heart and posture of Christ.

Heart of Christ for Children

“Jesus loved children with a grand and profound love,” Herman Bavinck writes (The Christian Family, 43). And do we? Answering that question may require a closer look at our Lord’s response when the little children came to him.

How might we become more like this Man who made his home among the children, this almighty Lord of the little ones? Among the various pro-child postures we see in Mark 10:13–16, consider three.

1. Presence

First, Jesus created a warm and welcoming presence for children.

Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children. Young ones apparently hung around him with ease, such that he could spontaneously take a child “in his arms” while resting with his disciples in Capernaum (Mark 9:36). Later, as Jesus enters Jerusalem, children gladly follow him, shouting their hosannas (Matthew 21:15–16). And then in our scene, parents and children approach him apparently without hesitation (Mark 10:13).

“Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children.”

What about Jesus communicated such an unthreatening welcome? We might note the times he helped and healed children, like the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:41–42) or the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:14–15). Yet these stories are also examples of a far larger pattern in Jesus’s ministry, which was noticeably bent toward those the world might consider “little”: lepers, demoniacs, tax collectors, prostitutes. He was not haughty, but associated with the lowly (Romans 12:16). And children, seeing this lover of lowliness, knew they were not too lowly for him.

If we too want to become a welcome presence for children, we might begin by bending ourselves toward lowliness in general. Upon entering our Sunday gatherings and small groups, and as we move through our cities, do we see the lost and lonely, the bruised and broken? Do we wrap gentleness around vulnerability and bestow honor on weakness? If so, children are likely to notice our humble, bent-down hearts, a presence low enough for them to reach.

2. Priority

Second, Jesus made children a practical priority, giving them generous amounts of his time and attention.

If anyone had good reason to shuffle past the children — “Sorry, kids, not now” — it was Jesus. No one had higher priorities or a loftier mission. No one’s time was more valuable. Yet no one gave his priorities or his time so patiently to those we might see as distractions. On his way to save the world, our Lord paused and “took [the children] in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them” (Mark 10:16). His life and ministry were full, but not too full for children.

In our own lives, prioritizing children calls for active planning, a willingness to devote portions of our schedule to play and pretend. But as Jesus shows us, prioritizing children also calls for responsive receiving, or what we might call living an interruptible life.

Children are master interrupters. Tugs on the jeans and cries from the crib, impulsive addresses and immodest stompings — kids have a way of ruining well-laid plans. The more like Jesus we become, however, the more readily we will embrace our ruined plans as part of God’s good plan. And we will remember that if Jesus could pause to linger with little children, then we too can pause our own important tasks, bend down on a knee, and give children the eye-level attention of Christ.

3. Prayer

Third, Jesus prayed and pursued children’s spiritual welfare.

When the children came to Jesus, he not only received them and held them; he not only looked at them and spoke to them. He also laid his hands on them and, in the presence of his Father, bestowed a benediction upon their little heads (Mark 10:16).

We don’t know how old the children were, but they were young enough to be brought by their parents (Mark 10:13). They were young enough, too, that the disciples apparently saw little spiritual potential in them. Not so with Jesus. The Lord who loves to the thousandth generation sees farther than we can: he can discern in a child’s face the future adult and budding disciple; he can plant seeds of prayer in fields that may not bear fruit for many years.

Do we invest such patient spiritual care in children? When we pray for our friends, do we bring their little ones, by name, before the throne of grace as well? Do we find creative ways not only to joke and play with the kids in our churches, but also to share Jesus with them in thoughtful, age-appropriate ways? And do our evangelistic efforts take into account the not-yet-believers walking knee-high among us?

Oh, that each of us, parents or not, would join the mothers and fathers in Mark 10, desperate to hand our children into the blessed arms of Christ. When we hear him say, “Let the children come,” may we respond, “We will bring them.”

Posture, Not Programs

If our treatment of children looks more like the disciples’ than our Lord’s, then our problem, at heart, is that we are not yet children at heart. “Let the children come to me,” he says, “for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:14–15). We have become too big; we have outgrown grace. For the doorway into the kingdom is small — so small that we can enter only if we kneel to the height of a little child.

To oppose the anti-child forces in this world, we need more than a pro-life position, a high view of motherhood, and a robust Sunday school program. All these we may have and more, and yet still become the objects of Jesus’s indignation.

We need a posture, a spirit, a kinship with the living Christ, who left the highest place for the lowest, who became a child so we might become children of God. The more we love Jesus, the more we will love children. The more like him we become, the more powerfully will our presence, our priorities, and our prayers say, “Let the children come to him” — and the more the children will come.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. (Hebrews 13:7)

I grew up in a mixed denomination in Sri Lanka and was often exposed to liberal preaching. But my mother, a convert to Christianity, drilled into her five children the dangers of unorthodox teaching and how important God’s word was to life. All five remain committed evangelical Christians today. And thankfully God has provided a much stronger evangelical witness in the denomination today than when I was a boy.

When I was thirteen, we got a new pastor, the Reverend George Good, a missionary from Northern Ireland. The first Sunday that he preached, we went to church nervously, wondering whether he held evangelical convictions. My mother later said that when we sang a particular hymn early in the service, she knew her prayers were answered. The hymn was Charles Wesley’s “Jesus, the Name High over All.”

My parents were very active in church, and naturally we got to know the Rev. Good, whom we affectionately called “Uncle George.” I received an impression then that remains with me even to this day: this is the most Christlike man I have met. Little by little as I watched him, two convictions grew in me: First, my most important goal in life should be to be like Jesus. And second, the most vicious battle I have in life is with my sinful nature, which hinders my being like Jesus. Despite numerous failings, this remains my desire and battle today.

Favorite Day of the Week

Soon Sunday became my favorite day of the week. I came to see worship as something glorious. Uncle George introduced us to the great hymns of the faith, which celebrated the great doctrines of the faith. Aided by music, the language of the heart, the lyrics triggered joy and praise within me. It was later that I was able to articulate this experience verbally with the expression “the joy of truth,” which gradually became a key theme of my life and theology. Hymns are bearers of truth, and truth is one of the happiest things in life. Even today, I begin my time with God almost daily by singing a hymn.

Sunday was also special because our pastor offered a feast of biblical preaching each week. Rev. Good was a busy man, giving himself to the rigors of pastoral work. But rumor had it that he would be up into the night preparing his sermons. Preaching is such a great work, reflecting the honor of God and his word, that it needed to be done well. And George Good did it well.

Each Sunday, we would come to church eager to hear what gems he had mined from the word. I was exposed to the example of a man who tirelessly worked with people but also conscientiously studied the word and prepared good expository sermons. This is hard and tiring work.

“Hymns are bearers of truth, and truth is one of the happiest things in life.”

Most ministers are called to do a lot of things and strive to do them all well. The result is tiredness. As far as I know, the Bible never calls tiredness a sin. It is wrong not to delegate responsibilities to others. It is wrong not to take a Sabbath rest. It is wrong to be always complaining and unhappy about how hard we have to work. George Good was an example of a happy man who worked very hard with pastoral care and the ministry of the word. I had a model to follow.

My Hunger to Preach

I was about fourteen years old when I committed myself fully to Christ. I suppose seeing the glory of ministry in my church made it attractive to me too. Soon I became convinced that God had called me to the ministry. But there was a problem. I was extremely shy and hardly opened my mouth in public. I dared not tell anyone that I wanted to be a preacher! I also felt that I was the mediocre member of a very capable family. I thought I would amount to nothing significant. How could I ever hope to be a minister of the glorious gospel?

When I was fifteen years old, I followed the confirmation classes at church with the Rev. Good. As part of the course, he had personal appointments alone with each of the youth. I think he wanted to make sure that all those he was going to confirm had been born again. When I met with him, he asked me a question that astounded me: “Ajith, have you considered going into the ministry?” Someone really did think that this mediocre, tongue-tied, shy boy could possibly be a preacher! I don’t remember what answer I gave, but I was encouraged to keep thinking about the call to ministry.

Sunday after Sunday, I heard inspiring, faithful preaching. Over time, this awakened and fostered my own hunger to preach. Thus began an exciting journey into the study and proclamation of the word. Later in my father’s library, I found books of Bible exposition by men like F.B. Meyer, G. Campbell Morgan, and John Stott. I devoured these books. My real introduction to the supernatural power of preaching, though, was still what I heard each Sunday in my local church.

When Youth Become Pastors

After finishing my university studies, I went to the United States to study at Asbury Theological Seminary. I had hoped to return and work with Youth for Christ, the movement I served in before leaving Sri Lanka. While in seminary, however, almost everyone I respected told me that I could be making a big mistake doing parachurch ministry. The church or a seminary was the place for a person with my gifts, they said. I was confused and wrote to my parents for wisdom.

“A pastor’s calling is not to be famous; it is to tend the flock God has entrusted to him.”

George Good had returned to Sri Lanka at that time on an assignment. My parents told him about my struggle. His response was not what one would expect from a churchman. He said, “Let him work for Youth for Christ. God can use him to send many young people into the church.” So, I ended up working for Youth for Christ and have now been on staff for 47 years. I believe what George Good said happened.

Through our ministry, hundreds of unchurched youths have found their permanent home in churches. About a hundred have become pastors. Considering that the Protestant population in Sri Lanka is about 300,000, that is a significant figure.

Faithfulness and Fame

Uncle George taught me through his hard work, his faithful preaching, and his wise counsel. He also taught me through suffering. Shortly before he and his wife Eileen left for Sri Lanka, the educational policies here changed, making it impossible for their teenage daughters, Valerie and Joan, to come with them. Their family sacrificed so much for our people. What a relief to know that, despite the huge price they paid, both daughters are vibrant Christians today.

Here was a man whose Christlike character I could never come close to matching. Here was a man whose all-around capability in ministry I could never imitate. But I am known fairly widely, whereas George Good is known only in Britain and Sri Lanka. From a worldly viewpoint, that seems unfair.

But I do not think that would be a problem for George Good. His values were not derived from this world. A pastor’s calling is not to be famous; it is to tend the flock God has entrusted to him. That he did. In terms of qualification for service, a pastor needed to be Christlike and to perform his duties conscientiously, to the best of his ability. That he did, with distinction, even though it did not make him famous over a wide sphere. He surely heard a resounding “Well done” when he met his Master. That is reward enough!

And here on earth, he demonstrated the beauty of Jesus and the glory of pastoral ministry, qualities that won me as a boy and young man. Today, many features that characterize my ministry, and that of my minister brother Duleep, were first learned by watching George Good.

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast.

Well, God is happy in himself. Amen. And God wants us to be happy in himself. Amen. If you start applying biblical categories here, you begin to ask this question: How does God’s joy become my joy? That’s our question today — a really good one — from a listener named Heather in Chicago.

“Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast,” she writes. “My question for you is about the nature of who God is and how he relates to our joy. Can you explain to me, from the Bible, the person and work of the Holy Spirit as the love and joy shared between the Father and the Son? I don’t quite understand this without making his person seem more like a force or a cosmic energy. And then how does the person of the Spirit enable us to experience God’s joy within us? It seems like those two realities connect, the person of the Spirit and the joy in us. But it doesn’t connect for me. Not yet. Can you help me understand these two dynamics from the Bible?”

I think it’s crucial, as we try to understand our relationship with the Holy Spirit, that we fix it firmly in our minds that we are dealing with a distinct person. Just fix it, so that whatever else is uncertain, don’t let that be uncertain: a person, a divine person, the third person of the Trinity.

Fellowship of the Spirit

In fact, I’ve been struck recently — even before I heard this question — how the New Testament encourages us to enjoy fellowship with each of the three divine persons of the Trinity, not just fellowship with God in the abstract or general way, but fellowship with God the Father, fellowship with God the Son, fellowship with God the Spirit. For example, 1 Corinthians 1:9 says that God called us “into the fellowship of his Son.” Second Corinthians 13:14 refers to “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” First John 1:3 says, “Our fellowship is with the Father.” So, we’re taught to have fellowship — communion, personal relations — with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

You know what book I would recommend, Tony: John Owen, Communion with the Triune God. Nobody, I don’t think, in the history of the church has helped people come to terms with what it means to relate to each person of the Trinity like John Owen. I would recommend Communion with the Triune God by John Owen.

Now, that implies that the Holy Spirit is a person — someone you can relate to, talk to — which is exactly the way Jesus spoke of him. He says in John 14:26, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he” — and yes, it is masculine, not neuter (to agree with spirit, pneuma) — “he will teach you all things.” So, he is distinct from the Father, because the Father sends him, and he’s a teacher when he comes, not just a force or gas.

“The New Testament encourages us to enjoy fellowship with each of the three divine persons of the Trinity.”

The apostle Paul picks up on this very reality of the Spirit as distinct from the Father and a very personal teacher in 1 Corinthians 2:10, 13, where he says, “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” What an amazing statement. “The Spirit searches . . . the depths of God. . . . And we impart [things of God] in words . . . taught by the Spirit.” So, Paul is just like Jesus. Paul is picking it up and continuing what Jesus taught. Jesus and Paul treat the Holy Spirit not as an impersonal force or power, but as a person who comes and teaches and indwells believers and who can be related to personally.

Spirit of a Spirit?

Then consider that Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” In other words, God is not material. He’s not physical. He is spirit, which means that when we say that one of the persons of the Trinity is the Spirit of God, we are saying he is the Spirit of a spirit.

Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to say the spirit has a Spirit? We are not saying he’s the image of the spirit or the radiance of the spirit or the logos or word of the spirit, all of which are said about the Son. So, what are we saying when we refer to the Holy Spirit of God, who is himself as Trinity spirit?

Here’s what Jonathan Edwards — who has helped me so much — says: “The word ‘spirit’ in Scripture, when used concerning minds . . . is put for the disposition, inclination, or temper of the mind.” For example, when Ephesians 4:23 says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” it refers to the disposition or temper of your mind. Edwards goes on,

So, I suppose when we read of the Spirit of God, who we are told is a spirit, it is to be understood of the disposition, temper, or affection of the divine mind. . . . Now, the sum of God’s temper or disposition is love, for he is infinite love. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 21:122)

Now, when he says that, we must resist — as Heather pointed out — the temptation to think of love as a mere force or power rather than a person. Edwards is not denying the personhood of the Holy Spirit when he talks of him as the temper or the disposition or the love of God. Edwards is simply trying to put all the biblical pieces together.

Eternal Love of God

The New Testament doesn’t just come out and tell us in a doctrinal statement, “The Holy Spirit is a person,” or, “The person is the very embodiment of the love of God.” It doesn’t say that. The various statements of the New Testament point in this direction. But you have to put the pieces together, which means we need to be careful — oh, how careful — lest we go off the rails and become heretics. I think all of our human efforts — I’d say this in general now about Edwards, myself, or anybody else — to conceptualize the relationships within the Trinity need to confess that we see through a glass darkly until we know even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12), which means, “Be careful.”

“The Spirit, in his essence, is God’s joyful love, loving joy in person.”

Now, here’s another pointer to the question that Heather’s concerned about. First John 4:12–13 points to the Holy Spirit as the love of God in us. Here’s what it says: “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” So, if you put all that together, God in us, his love in us, his Spirit in us, all seem to point to the fact that the way the love of God abides in us is by his Spirit. That is his disposition, his temper. That is his love in person, abiding in us by the person of the Holy Spirit.

Eternal Joy of God

Now, the piece that remains to be added for Heather’s question is joy. This is added by pondering that the love that God is from all eternity is not a sacrificial love between the Father and the Son. They are infinitely beautiful, infinitely worthy of each other’s love, which means that they delight in each other infinitely. That’s what their love is.

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am [totally delighted]” — that’s my paraphrase of “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). To say that the love of the Father and the Son for each other is embodied in the Spirit is to say that the Spirit, in his essence, is God’s joyful love, loving joy in person, because God’s loving from eternity has been his enjoying from eternity. That’s how the persons of the Godhead have related to each other. They’re not disappointed; they don’t have to overcome any obstacles to delight in each other.

So, when Jesus says, “My joy I give to you” (see John 15:11), or when he says, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21), he is welcoming us into the fullest experience of the Son’s love for the Father. It seems right, then, to say this is experienced by being filled with the Holy Spirit, who is the very person who is the love of God and the joy of God. Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians 1:6 of “the joy of the Holy Spirit,” the joy that the Holy Spirit gives by coming himself to live in us as the very love and joy of God.

I pray that God would help you, Heather, and all of us, as we humbly and carefully try to faithfully put the pieces of God’s precious word together.

In his essay “The Trouble with ‘X,’” C.S. Lewis describes that person who makes our lives difficult. Who is it that gives you regular grief? Maybe it’s a spouse or a coworker or a fellow church member. Sometimes a friend, seeing us look “glum,” will probe us until we reluctantly open up.

On such occasions the . . . friend usually says, “But why don’t you tell them? Why don’t you go to [them] . . . and have it all out? People are usually reasonable. All you’ve got to do is to make them see things in the right light. Explain it to them in a reasonable, quiet, friendly way.” And we, whatever we say outwardly, think sadly to ourselves, “He doesn’t know ‘X.’” We do. We know how utterly hopeless it is to make “X” see reason. Either we’ve tried it over and over again — tried it till we are sick of trying it — or else we’ve never tried it because we saw from the beginning how useless it would be. (God in the Dock, 161–62)

But in contrast to those like “X,” whom Jane Austen describes as “beyond the reach of reason” (Pride and Prejudice, 57), God calls us to be “open to reason” (James 3:17). Are you open to reason? As we consider this description, seeking to be transformed into reasonable people ourselves, we can keep from becoming someone else’s “X.”

Heaven-Sent Wisdom

The object described as “open to reason” in James 3:17 is not people, but wisdom. Wisdom is the issue here in the surrounding context (James 3:13–18). And not just any wisdom, but “the wisdom that comes down from above” (vv. 15, 17). In typical James fashion, it’s a wisdom that shows itself by its works, not simply by its claims (v. 13).

Notice how James speaks not of the “brilliance” but of “the meekness of [this] wisdom” (v. 13). This kind of wisdom is moral, not merely intellectual. It’s about how you learn, not simply what you know. It affects how you get along with others, not just what you can teach them. To be without this wisdom is not simply to be ignorant, but to be “earthly, unspiritual, [and] demonic” (v. 15). Its absence (and counterfeit) is marked by “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition” (vv. 14, 16).

If you can spot fool’s wisdom by its rivalry, drama, and disorder, then how do you know when you’re looking at the real thing? In answer, James gives us a sevenfold description of “the wisdom from above” (v. 17):

pure
peaceable
gentle
open to reason
full of mercy and good fruits
impartial
sincere

This is the context for our phrase. Other translations render it “easy to be entreated” (KJV) or “willing to yield” (NKJV). Hopefully a mental picture is beginning to emerge.

Life with Closed Ears

As soon as you begin to grasp what “open to reason” means, you also begin to see why it matters. It matters because the alternative is a kind of closed-minded stubbornness that not only makes us dumber but also destroys our relationships.

The trouble with “X” is that you can’t teach him anything. Like Nabal, “he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him” (1 Samuel 25:17). He often has to be bailed out by others around him (like his wife, Abigail), though he often won’t even realize it, and he certainly won’t thank you for it. He can’t have real friends, because friendship requires some give and take, and he can’t take. He can only give out of his imaginary reservoir of wisdom. When this person has power, he tends to be an ogre, and people rejoice when he is removed (1 Samuel 25:39–42).

When he doesn’t have power, he tends to be a nuisance. He’s the foolish son who brings “sorrow to his mother” (Proverbs 10:1). She’s the rebellious wife who pulls down her house with her own hands (Proverbs 14:1). He’s the young employee who can’t obey simple orders or show up to work on time yet thinks he could run the company better than the boss.

Being ignorant and inexperienced is not the problem. We all start out this way — both as children and as adults beginning new seasons (like getting married, having our first child, or starting a new career). The problem is being unwilling to yield, hard to be entreated, and not open to reason. It’s a stagnating, suicidal state of mind, like a dry garden shielding itself from the rain.

None of us is self-sufficient. By God’s design, we need other people’s input in order to grow into wise, fruitful people. Being open to reason allows us to receive the life-giving, character-shaping counsel that we require. More than that, by God’s design we also need companionship. And being unreasonable is a good way to end up alone (Proverbs 25:24).

“Because we’re not God, our way is not always best, and we are probably wrong about a lot.”

This virtue is vital in our current climate of polarization. Rarely have humans been bombarded by so much information. Algorithms have made it easy to live in echo chambers, where our opinions are constantly reinforced, and our opponents seem less and less worth yielding to or even listening to. But more information doesn’t mean more wisdom, and greater confidence doesn’t guarantee greater accuracy.

Regaining Reason

If we’re going to grow in this trait of wisdom, if we’re going to seek it like silver and long for it like a thirsty man longs for water, then we’re going to have to not just accept but love this very simple reality: we are not God. And because we’re not God, our way is not always best, and we are probably wrong about a lot. We need to be okay with that. Only God has perfect wisdom; the rest of us have room to grow. So, we can begin by asking God for the kind of humility that can say, “I’m sorry,” or, “Let’s try it your way this time.”

This means cultivating a willingness to hear both sides of an issue before forming an opinion. “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17). In my own case, I was a firm Arminian until I listened to John Piper’s sermons on Romans 8–9. I was a King James Only-ist until I heard James White cross-examine the men I was reading. And I was convinced that “essentially literal” was the only right way to do Bible translation until I read Mark Strauss and Dave Brunn.

Most of us should talk less and read more — or to quote James, “be quick to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19). Some claims are self-evident (“I just know that kidnapping is wrong!”). Other claims are not (“I just know this vaccine works/doesn’t work”). So, ask yourself, “Do I have a right to be this dogmatic on this issue, given my level of knowledge?”

This doesn’t mean we should be doctrinally unstable. Some teachings in Scripture are foundational enough (and clear enough) that we ought not to budge on them. God wants us to be open to reason, but not “carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14; also 1 John 2:24). It does, however, require us to distinguish primary, secondary, and tertiary issues, and to be more willing to yield on matters of less importance.

Open to Suggestions

Finally, while wisdom means yielding to solid arguments, it may also mean yielding to innocent requests, especially from friends and family. As Douglas Moo puts it, being open to reason can look like “a willing deference to others when unalterable theological or moral principles are not involved” (The Letter of James, 176). Like love, wisdom doesn’t always “insist on its own way” (1 Corinthians 13:5).

So yes, ask yourself intellectual questions, like “When’s the last time I received criticism without getting defensive?” “Do I solicit constructive feedback in hopes of finding ways to improve?” “Can I articulate my opponent’s position fairly?” But also ask yourself relational questions, like “How big of a deal is it to pick the family movie in my house?” “How easily do I yield to my wife’s persuasions on trivial matters even when I have a different preference?” “How often do I say yes when my toddler asks for a ride on my back when I would rather sit and read?”

As a final suggestion, try reading that opening Lewis quote to some honest friends and family, and ask them, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I remind you of ‘X’?” That should tell you where you’re starting from. And that is where Christ will meet you.

Among New Testament commands we’re quick to qualify today (or just ignore altogether), Romans 16:16 may stand out:

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

Really? We might chuckle at the thought of everyone kissing each other before the Sunday service. At least not in our time and place, we think. Maybe other cultures; not ours.
And we might be reasonable to respond that way.

Then we find the apostle repeating the charge again at the end of three more letters (1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:26), and Peter too (1 Peter 5:14). Even if Jesus might approve of our not doing exactly what his apostles said, but finding appropriate expressions for today, do we have a “theology of the kiss” to guide us?

Look across the breadth of Scripture, and we discover a surprising (and perhaps uncomfortable) amount of kissing — almost fifty instances. And the nature and kinds of these kisses show that this isn’t simply an ancient-world custom. Rather, this kissing is distinctive to the people of the one true God, and a mark of his glory. Their lips bring him honor. A kissing kingdom says something about its sovereign. Its kisses reflect a king who captures human hearts, not just minds and duty.

“A kissing kingdom says something about its sovereign.”

Here, we’ll survey a theology of kissing in the Old Testament, and identify one key takeaway for the church age. Then, in a future article, we’ll draw attention to two special instances of kissing in the New Testament, and further fill out the rich background against which the apostles enjoin the holy kiss.

What’s in a Biblical Kiss?

Before looking at several kinds of kissing in Scripture, let’s first ask about the nature of the act itself and its meaning. What makes a kiss significant?

First, to state the obvious, but necessarily so in increasingly digital and remote times, kissing requires bodily, physical proximity. It assumes nearness, even intimacy. No one blows kisses in the Bible. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim, he said to Jacob (who he thought was Esau), “Come near and kiss me, my son” (Genesis 27:26). A filial kiss would bring him close enough to smell and touch, and confirm which son it was. So too, a generation later, when Jacob himself was old, eyes dim with age, he brought near Joseph’s sons that he might kiss and bless them (Genesis 48:10). Such nearness requires a willingness to touch and be touched, and that with a sensitive and sacred member: the lips.

Kissing, then, also requires trust — that is, neither party fears imminent physical harm from the other (which could be easily enacted at such close range). The notorious offender here is Joab who twice abuses such trust. In 2 Samuel 3, he drew near to Abner under the pretense of peace and stabbed him in the stomach to avenge a brother’s death in battle. In 2 Samuel 20, Joab drew near to Amasa and took him “by the beard with his right hand to kiss him.” Assuming friendship, Amasa did not anticipate a sword in Joab’s hand (2 Samuel 20:9). Kissing requires a level of trust, making it a mark of peculiar depravity to betray, and exploit, a seeming ally under the pretense of a kiss.

Given the requisite nearness and trust, the kiss, in its essence, shows affection. It is a “sign,” an outward expression of an inward posture of the heart. Early in the biblical story, the kiss is typically a demonstration of heartfelt affection at the reunion of long-estranged relatives, whether Jacob with Rachel (Genesis 29:11), or Laban with Jacob (Genesis 29:13), or Esau with Jacob (Genesis 33:4), Joseph with his brothers (Genesis 45:15), Jacob with his sons (Genesis 48:10), Moses with Aaron (Exodus 4:27), or Moses with his father-in-law (Exodus 18:7). These are family members reuniting, not enemies securing new peace. The kiss is an act of trust and love among those who already share in peace.

Kinds of Kissing

As we work through the many instances of kissing in Scripture, we find several distinct types. Far and away, the most common are the greeting kiss or farewell kiss. They demonstrate familial affection, expressing ongoing love within established relationships. Such kisses, as we might expect, often accompany an embrace (Genesis 29:13; 33:4; 48:10; also Luke 15:20). Biblical figures also kiss goodbye, often with tears: Laban kissing his grandchildren (Genesis 31:28, 55); Joseph, his dying father (Genesis 50:1); and Naomi, her daughters-in-law (Ruth 1:9, 14). David and Jonathan, in an unusual covenant of friendship, kiss each other and weep at their parting (1 Samuel 20:41).

A second type of kiss is the kind that we today (at least in the West) probably assume would be the majority, though it’s not: the marital kiss. We might think to flip first to the Song of Solomon, and there it is, at the very outset: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine” (Song of Solomon 1:2). While the couple is here not yet married, they are anticipating their covenant love. Their kisses, then, are no less familial, but now they are becoming familial in the most exclusive and intimate of senses. The foil to this kiss, of course, would be the adulterous kiss of Proverbs 7. The “forbidden woman . . . dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart” lies in wait for the fool. “She seizes him and kisses him” (Proverbs 7:5, 10, 13). This is an evil, unholy kiss, the literal prostituting of the lips.

If readers today are most familiar with romantic and marital kisses, we likely least expect the regal kisses wrapped up with ancient kingship. When the kiss comes from a subject to his king, we might call it a “kiss of homage.” More than just a bow, which can happen at a distance and accents submission, the kiss expresses a heart of devotion and love, even delight. The kiss of homage also presumes the trust of the king, who allows a subject into such proximity with the dignitary. When the prophet Samuel anointed David king, he “took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him” (1 Samuel 10:1). As he does, Samuel expresses his glad devotion to the newly anointed king.

“The kiss, sincerely expressed, communicates not only welcome but delight.”

But in a king’s presence, kisses can go both ways. When a kiss comes from the king to his subject, it serves as a great sign of blessing. In 2 Samuel 14:33, when Absalom has been estranged from his father for two years, he comes into the king’s presence for the first time and bows. David then welcomes his estranged son with a kiss that is not only a familial (and filial) greeting but a kingly kiss of blessing. The king communicates that he holds no grudge against his son (a father welcomes home his prodigal, Luke 15:20), and as king, his kiss expresses not only his own personal acceptance but the whole kingdom’s.

Kiss the Son

Among the many instances of kissing in the Old Testament, one regal kiss stands out above the rest — the one of Psalm 2:12:

Kiss the Son,lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,for his wrath is quickly kindled.Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Here “the Son” is God’s anointed king over his people (Psalm 2:2; Acts 4:25 attributes the psalm to David). Hostile nations rage and unbelieving kings take counsel against him, and in doing so they plot against the God who has installed him — that is, the God who laughs at such hubris, and speaks in holy wrath, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6). This turns the threat utterly on its head. It is not God’s appointed king, “the Son,” who’s actually in danger, but any and all who oppose him.

The king then issues his enemies a warning: “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:11). The next utterance declares what form such a dramatic change of heart should take:

Kiss the Son.

This is not just a bow of submission. Any defeated foe can cower, and fall to his knees, when overpowered. But Psalm 2 calls for a kiss of homage, and kissing expresses the movement, and transformation, of the heart. Former enemies not only become servants and kiss their new king; they become worshipers in their very soul.

Why So Many Kisses?

In the end, the nature of the kiss speaks volumes about the God who rules over all, the glory of his Anointed, and the faith of his people in him. A people who kiss — whether to greet each other or in the act of worship — testify to a dynamic life of the heart, much like a people who sing. The people of the one true God not only think; they feel. They not only confess; they kiss. They not only affirm, but they do so with affection. And the people of God, in ancient Israel and the early church, are singers and kissers.

The kiss, sincerely expressed, communicates not only welcome but delight. It is no mere exchange of niceties, but a communication of steadfast love. While, for many of us, the “holy kiss” may not, at present, fall in the acceptable (or comfortable) range of normal greetings, we will do well to expand our expressions of holy affection, and find meaningful ways to communicate not only acceptance to our fellows in Christ but affection for them.

And all the while, in expressing our affection for his people, we say something about our God and King as the one who not only moves the human heart, but himself is our final satisfaction. When we “kiss the Son,” we not only acknowledge him, in word and in worship, as Lord and Savior, but we express delight in him, in our hearts, as our supreme Treasure. And so we are, in Christ, a kissing people.

ABSTRACT: Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the early fourth century brought an end to state-sponsored persecution in the Roman empire. Around the same time, however, the relatively peaceful Persian empire turned violently upon the church in its lands. Though the accurate number of martyrs remains difficult to assess, the most conservative estimates place the death toll in the Great Persian Persecution (339–379) far higher — even ten times higher — than the death toll in the worst Roman persecution. In response to such widespread assaults, many Persian Christians fled if they could. Many others, either unable or unwilling to flee, took courage from stories of faithful sufferers and stood firm. Today, their testimonies still give fresh courage to those who suffer for Christ.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Donald Fairbairn, Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, to offer a brief history of the great Persian persecution.

When Western Protestants think of the persecution of early Christians, we often imagine believers being thrown to the lions in the Roman Colosseum. According to the story as we learned it in Sunday school and elsewhere, Christians were ruthlessly persecuted for their faith for three centuries, until Constantine’s dramatic conversion around the year 312 brought about a sea change in the Roman empire’s attitude toward Christianity.

This Sunday school version of the story, while not wrong, is both misleading and incomplete. It is misleading because it gives the impression that persecution in the Roman empire was continuous, when in fact it was sporadic, varying from nonexistent to severe, depending on where and when one lived. This story is also incomplete because it does not even acknowledge by far the worst persecution of Christians in the ancient world, the Great Persian Persecution instigated by Shah Shapur II in 339.1 Many Western Christians are not aware that Christianity quickly took root in Persia (approximately modern-day Iran and Iraq) in ancient times.2 A look at the differing fortunes of Christians in the Roman and Persian empires, as well as the ways they responded to persecution, yields important lessons for believers today.

Two Great Persecutions Compared

Persecution of Christians in the Roman empire was generally local in character, confined to a region based on the personal antipathy of the governor toward the faith. But there were two major periods of widespread persecution, encompassing most regions of the empire at the same time. These were a persecution under emperors Decius and Valerian in the 250s, and the Great Persecution under Emperor Diocletian, which began in 303 and lasted a couple of years in the western part of the empire and a couple of decades in the eastern part. It was during this Great Persecution that Constantine became a Christian and gained control over the entire Roman empire.

By carefully counting the martyr lists in given regions at given times, modern scholars can gain a general picture of the severity of the persecution and then extrapolate to arrive at guesses of how many believers were killed in total. An estimate that has gained scholarly acceptance is perhaps 3,000–3,500 deaths in all, of which maybe 500 happened in the west and 2,500–3,000 in the eastern parts of the empire.3 When we consider that in the early fourth century, the population of the Roman empire was between 60 and 75 million people, of whom perhaps 10 percent (or about 6–7 million) were Christians, we can see that the total death toll was relatively small.

In contrast, the Great Persian Persecution is traditionally regarded as having lasted forty years, from 339 until Shapur’s death in 379. In actuality, it was frightfully intense for a couple of decades and then ebbed and flowed until the early fifth century, well beyond the life span of Shapur himself. Estimating deaths from this persecution is much harder than in the case of Diocletian’s, but one of the earliest reports we have is sobering.

The church historian Sozomen, writing about 440, declares, “I shall simply state that the number of men and women whose names have been ascertained, and who were martyred at this period, have been computed to be sixteen thousand; while the multitude outside of these is beyond enumeration.”4 This statement, even if exaggerated, points to a huge death toll. Modern estimates have varied from as many as the eye-popping figure of 190,0005 down to a more “modest” figure of 35,000.6 Even the conservative estimate is ten times the number of Christians martyred in the Great Roman Persecution, although the Persian empire’s population (perhaps 18–35 million) was less than half that of the Roman, with a much smaller Christian population as well. By any estimate, the loss of life in the Great Persian Persecution was immeasurably greater than the death toll of the Great Roman Persecution a few decades earlier.

“The loss of life in the Great Persian Persecution was immeasurably greater than the death toll of the Great Roman Persecution.”

This staggering death toll is all the more surprising when we consider that prior to the fourth century, there had been no significant persecution of Christians in the Persian empire at all. Indeed, early in the fourth century, just as the Roman empire shifted from persecuting Christians (in varying degrees in different places and times) to favoring our faith, the Persian empire changed from basically ignoring Christians to unleashing a savage persecution on them. How did such a shocking change come about? To answer this question, we will need a brief overview of early Christianity in the Persian empire.

Treatment of Christians in the Persian Empire

The early Christian period took place during the long reigns of two great Persian dynasties: the Parthians, who ruled from 247 BC until AD 224, and the Sassanids, who reigned from 224 until they were conquered by the Arabs in 651. The Parthian period was one of relative peace in Persia, and there was essentially no state action against Christians, for several possible reasons.

First, the Parthian regime was benign and decentralized, with a great deal of provincial autonomy. There was little persecution of anyone for any reason. Second, the Romans were the major menace to Persia, and it was common for Persian rulers to take the opposite position on any matter that was important to Rome. Since the Romans were suspicious of their Christian population, the Persians tended to welcome them or at least to leave them alone. Third was the fact that Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in Persia, was much closer to the Christian faith than Roman polytheism. Zoroastrianism was a dualistic religion focused on the conflict between good and evil, and there were superficial resemblances with Christianity, such as a belief in a coming messiah and judgment after death. As a result, Christians did not stand out in Persian society nearly to the degree they did in pagan Roman society.

The political situation of Persia changed dramatically in the early third century. Significant invasions from Roman forces fueled a popular rebellion against the peaceful Parthian dynasty. A much more authoritarian regime, the Sassanids, gained popular favor on a platform of keeping Persia safe from the Romans, and in 224, they took control. The Sassanids were strict Zoroastrians and made that religion the national faith of Persia.

This time period also saw the rise of Manichaeism, another form of dualism that was directly in competition with Zoroastrianism. Its prophet, Mani, combined many features of Zoroastrianism with some specifically Christian language (he even called himself a disciple of Jesus Christ), and Manichaeism spread like wildfire in Persia and beyond. It was clearly a threat to the national religion, and in the 270s Mani was executed by crucifixion. To the Sassanid rulers, Christianity and Manichaeism looked the same,7 and there was some minor persecution of Christians from 276 to 293 because they were incorrectly thought to be Manichaeans. This was the first time Christians were targeted for ill-treatment in the Persian empire, and while the suffering was mild, it is noteworthy that it came about mainly because of mistaken identity.8

Shapur’s Persecution of Christians

The dawn of the fourth century saw Persia facing increased threats not only from the Romans (who captured most of northern Mesopotamia), but also from the Arabs and other wandering groups who attacked at the same time. When Shah Shapur II was born in 309, the empire seemed on the verge of collapse, but while still a teenager he steeled the Persian people to retake their homeland from invaders again.

Sometime before 325, the now-Christian Roman emperor Constantine wrote Shapur a letter, in which he encouraged the young shah to embrace Christianity.9 Constantine pointed out the presence of many Christians in Persia and urged Shapur to treat them well: “Now, because your power is great, I commend these persons to your protection; because your piety is eminent, I commit them to your care. Cherish them with your wonted humanity and kindness; for by this proof of faith you will secure an immeasurable benefit both to yourself and us.”10 In the process of making these suggestions, Constantine inadvertently called the attention of Shapur’s advisers both to the presence of Christians in their midst and to the fact that Rome now favored followers of the new religion.

In the 330s, with the Roman world solidly in his control and largely Christian, Constantine prepared for another Roman attack on Persia, but he fell ill and died in 337. Shapur immediately counterattacked in an attempt to retake the city of Nisibis (in extreme southeastern Turkey today), which the Romans had taken from Persia some four decades earlier. Shapur’s attack failed, and he blamed the defeat on the Christians in Nisibis, who he claimed had aided the Roman army. Back in the Persian capital, Seleucia-Ctesiphon (on the lower Tigris River near current-day Baghdad), rumors swirled that the Christian bishop of the city, Simon, was providing military intelligence to the Romans. Zoroastrian religious officials spread the rumors to stoke fires of animosity toward Christians, and in 339, Shapur began his massive crackdown on Christians.

The shah began by doubling the taxes on Christians and ordering Bishop Simon to collect. When Simon predictably refused,11 Shapur ordered the destruction of churches and the execution of bishops who refused to take part in the national worship of the sun. The shah personally offered Simon gifts if he would take part in the prescribed worship, but threatened to kill all Christians if he refused. Simon remained obstinate and was thrown into prison to reconsider. Finally, Shapur forced Simon to watch the execution of more than a hundred other Christian clergy before he too was beheaded.12 For at least the next twenty years, the Persians killed Christians throughout their empire. Most of the time, they identified church leaders and singled them out for execution. At other times, the Persians targeted Christians who had converted from Zoroastrianism — that is, native Persian converts, as opposed to Jews or Syrian foreigners who had become Christian. Occasionally they resorted simply to the indiscriminate massacre of Christian populations.

In the 360s, Shapur again had to face a Roman invasion, this one from Constantine’s nephew Julian the Apostate, who had thrown off his Christian upbringing and who had visions not only of restoring the glory of pagan Rome but also of becoming himself a new Alexander the Great. Julian advanced almost to Seleucia-Ctesiphon before being driven back and ultimately killed in battle in 363. Shapur showed no mercy to the defeated Romans; he demanded and received back all the Persian territory that had been taken before his birth. At this point, the shah may have slackened the persecution of Christians within his realm, but even after his death, the new Zoroastrian suspicion that Christians were Roman spies did not completely die down, and persecution continued sporadically.

Finally, in 409 Shah Yazdegerd I issued a decree of toleration. A council held in the capital in 410 praised Yazdegerd for his action and declared the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Isaac, to be the head (“catholicos”) of the Persian church. But unlike the situation in the Roman world, this edict of toleration would bring no lasting political favor toward Christianity, and the Persian church would live with an uncertain relationship to the state for the rest of its history.13

Persian Christian Responses to Persecution

The responses of Persian Christians to the Great Persecution are especially noteworthy in three ways, all of which stand in partial contrast to the earlier responses of Roman Christians to their Great Persecution.

First, in Persia, we have no evidence of the subversive maneuvering that seems to have been common farther west. In the Roman empire, we have stories of Christians who, when imperial officials came for their copies of the Scriptures, either gave the officials the runaround by sending them to one church member after another (in the hope that they would give up before finding any copies), or handed over heretical writings rather than the Scriptures, or in one case even turned in a medical textbook in the hope that the official either couldn’t read or wouldn’t care as long as he could show some confiscated writing for his efforts.14 No such accounts survive from Persia. Perhaps the Persian Christians were just as cunning as many Roman believers, and we happen to not possess the evidence. Or perhaps they were genuinely more heroic.

Second, we have a good deal of evidence of Persian Christians “voting with their feet” — attempting to read the political situation and migrating to areas they thought would give them more freedom to practice their faith. Such migration actually began even before the Great Persian Persecution. In the third century, when Rome was suspicious of Christians and Persia was more tolerant of them, the Persian church moved its center of operations from Edessa (on the disputed border between the empires) east to Nisibis and even southeast to the Persian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Then as the axe fell on Persian Christians in the fourth century, a number of them — including their most famous theologian/poet Ephrem the Syrian — moved back to the Roman orbit in response to the new political reality.

Even more strikingly, at the height of the Persian Persecution in 345, a group of some four hundred Persian Christians arrived on India’s Malabar Coast (southwestern India) to join the Christians who were already there. These newcomers seem to have been fleeing the Great Persian Persecution, and their presence in India forged bonds between Indian and Persian Christianity that would remain, to some degree, until the present day.15

Third, Persian Christians steeled themselves for resistance and suffering. We have a series of homilies from the pen of a fourth-century Persian writer named Aphrahat, and part of his purpose in preaching these sermons was clearly to encourage Christians who could not escape the hand of Shapur by fleeing Persia. Aphrahat recounted numerous examples of persecution from the Bible, emphasizing that God was still present with his people in the midst of their trials.16 Then surprisingly, he added to these biblical exemplars of heroic suffering for the faith a much more recent one:

Concerning our brethren who are in the West, in the days of Diocletian there came great affliction and persecution to the whole Church of God, which was in all their region. The Churches were overthrown and uprooted, and many confessors and martyrs made confession. And [the Lord] turned in mercy to them after they were persecuted.17

Aphrahat concluded that the church in Persia also had the opportunity to make confession in the midst of its own persecution.

This homily shows a remarkable degree of hope in the midst of a terrible ordeal, but it also demonstrates an equally noteworthy sense of solidarity with Christians in the Roman world. This solidarity is all the more striking since Rome and Persia were mortal enemies at the time, and since few Western Christians then were aware of their sisters and brothers in the Persian world.

Remembering the Persecuted

Most of us know that the Romans dramatically changed their attitude toward Christianity in the early fourth century, but in this essay we have seen that Persia did so as well — in the opposite direction. Shapur’s name is not as well-known as Diocletian’s or Constantine’s, but perhaps it should be. In fact, the very conversion of the Roman empire that brought persecution to an end in the West was one of the main reasons for the persecution of Christians farther east.

The situation of believers was drastically different at various times, and even in different places at the same time. Believers had to make their way through life in the midst of constant uncertainty about the attitude of the government and the surrounding society to their faith. When they could, they sought out regimes that were friendly to Christianity. When necessary, they steeled themselves to face persecution by remembering the sufferings of God’s people in Scripture and Christian history elsewhere. Church-state relationships have always been complicated, changing, and replete with challenges.

As a result, it is important for us not to use too narrow a lens as we examine the impact of political and social forces on Christians. In the fourth century, what was proclaimed in the West to be a miracle and a spectacular blessing led fairly directly to untold suffering for Christians outside the Roman world. Yet, so far as we know, Christians in Persia harbored no ill will toward their newly blessed Roman brothers and sisters. Instead, the Persian believers leaned on the Romans’ example of endurance in suffering as they bore down to suffer in their turn.

“There may come a time when Western Christians must again suffer greatly under persecution.”

Today as well, most of the Christians who suffer grievously for the faith do so in eastern and southern lands (especially the Middle East and eastern Africa), not in western ones. Today the persecutors are not the Persians, but often the Muslim Arabs who conquered Persia (and all of western Asia and northern Africa) in the seventh and eighth centuries. But the Christians who suffer persecution today have a long history of bearing it with patience and as much grace as possible. They have seen this before, and their history is full of stories that help to sustain them.

Meanwhile, we in the West suffer very little, if at all, for the faith. Will we learn the stories of our brothers and sisters in the East, both then and now? Will we stand against the great injustices done to them by societies opposed to the gospel, even as we stand against the much smaller injuries perhaps done against us by our societies that have largely turned their back on Christ? After all, there may come a time when Western Christians must again suffer greatly under persecution, and we will need to be ready.

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

Audio Transcript

Happy Monday as we get back after it here on the podcast. Pastor John, I know one of the things you really enjoy is answering questions in front of students — open-floor Q and As. You’ve been doing this for over fifty years, and you’re still at it — currently investing in the lives of students at Bethlehem College & Seminary. This time with students is built into your schedule now. And recently, in that context with BCS students, you had a chance to walk through the theological battles you’ve fought over the decades. And I was wondering, looking back on those battles, if you could share with us here on APJ what you said in private. Rehearse those battles, decade by decade. And, if you could, tell us what points you were trying to make in rehearsing this history with the students.

As part of my happy responsibilities as chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary, I regularly participate in what we call TableTalk, where the students gather to eat their lunch and ask questions of the leaders — and I’m one of those — related to life, related to ministry, how it relates to the issues of our day. I generally begin those sessions with some thoughts off my front burner just to prime the pump of questions and throw it open to whatever the students want to talk about.

“The best way to prepare for faithful, obedient, fruitful ministry in the next fifty years is to know your Bible deeply, thoroughly, confidently, joyfully.”

A few weeks ago, I tried to make this point in my introductory comments. I said something like this, looking at the students: “Since the issues that you will be facing in ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years from now — you’ll be my age in fifty years — since those issues that you’ll be facing are utterly unpredictable, and in some cases unimaginable, your best preparation right now in your teens and twenties and thirties is to gain the spiritual and intellectual abilities to interpret God’s never-changing word in Scripture according to its true, God-intended meaning, which will never leave you speechless, never, but always provide the profoundest wisdom for every new challenge, none of which takes God off guard.”

That was my main point to try to get across to them. And then to drive the point home, I gave them a glimpse into the controversies of the last fifty years of my life and how precious the Bible has become as an absolutely sure compass for staying the course of truth and wisdom, and as an anchor to keep me from being driven about by every wind of doctrine, and as a treasure chest of holy joy that satisfies so deeply that I’m not sucked into the seductive pleasures that, on the surface, change from era to era. (They don’t really change, but the form changes.)

Decades of Controversies

Here’s part of the glimpse that I gave them into my fifty-year history of dealing with unexpected issues. But let me say at the outset that I’m not going to focus on race and abortion as one of those issues, because they’re just pervasive. I mean, for the last decades of my life, I have lived every decade with issues of race that need to be addressed and issues of abortion that need to be addressed. So, understand that those are huge issues, and the fact that I don’t mention them in the list doesn’t mean they’re absent. It means they’re everywhere.

1960s: History and Criticism

In the 1960s, I was coming to terms with the controversy surrounding fresh historical arguments for the factual resurrection of Jesus Christ. Daniel Fuller’s Easter Faith and History had been published in 1965. Wolfhart Pannenberg was making waves with his 1968 book Revelation as History, where he argued that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was a historical event as real as your getting out of bed this morning, which in German Bultmannian circles in the ’60s was absolutely radical. He was one of the teachers I had, by the way, at the University of Munich in the 1970s.

Hand in glove with the controversy was the whole issue of the modern methodology of critical biblical scholarship. In 1966, George Ladd published The New Testament and Criticism, where he tried to sort out what was usable in so-called higher criticism and what was contradictory to the inspired nature of Scripture. Those were crucial days for me, crucial like crux, like crossroads. How I thank God, in the ways I could have gone, that he held on to me for his glory and for his word.

1970s: Eschatology, Anthropology, and Bibliology

Then came the 1970s and three huge issues. In 1970, Hal Lindsey published The Late Great Planet Earth. By 1999, that book had sold 35 million copies. In it, he virtually predicted the second coming by 1988 — I don’t know how that book stays in print unless they adjusted it — and he popularized the pre-tribulational rapture view of the second coming. And I wrote a paper in response to this. It became very personal because my father and I locked horns over this. There’s nobody I loved more than my father, and I didn’t want to alienate him. We got along pretty well, although that book brought a lot of stuff to the fore.

In 1975, Paul Jewett published Man as Male and Female, in which he said that when Paul instructed only men to teach and have authority in the church, he simply made a mistake. Paul just made a mistake and allowed his rabbinical background to silence his radical Christian newness. From then on to this very day, I knew that’s an issue I’ll never be able to get away from, because there are more critical things going on there, more reasons to be concerned than just one.

In 1976, Harold Lindsell published The Battle for the Bible and brought to public awareness how many Christian institutions were sliding away from a commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture. In 1978, the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy produced “The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.” I wrote a review of Lindsell’s book, and I’m very happy with what happened in Chicago. I’m happy to sign on to the Chicago statement on inerrancy.

1980s: Sovereignty and Missions

In the 1980s, two controversies stand out. Professor of philosophy Thomas Talbott and I went back and forth with articles in Reformed Journal over the sovereignty of God in Romans 9. I think the titles were like, “How Does a Sovereign God Love?” I published a book on Romans 9 called The Justification of God, which focused on Romans 9:1–23. And so, the understanding of God’s sovereignty in history and in salvation dominated the early 1980s.

Near the end of the decade, the missiological controversy surrounding the new language of “unreached people groups” and whether that was a biblical way to think or not was a huge issue for me. Does the Great Commission focus on reaching as many individuals as possible, which is what I had thought, or on reaching all the ethnolinguistic groups in the world?

1990s: Open Theism

Then much of the 1990s was dominated by open theism. Does God have an exhaustive foreknowledge of the future? Open theism said no, he doesn’t. Its chief spokesman was and is right here in the Twin Cities as a pastor, and so he and I debated back and forth. We had lunch together. I wrote much, and other people wrote very good books. Thankfully, I think open theism was basically marginalized, though it hasn’t gone away.

2000s: Emergent Church

In the 2000s, the emergent church flourished for a season and then morphed into other things. I don’t think it’s entirely gone away, but it’s not the movement it was. I took two of those leaders out to lunch one time, just to give our folks a flavor of what we’re talking about with the emergent church. I said to them, “Talking to you guys is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall,” to which they responded, “That’s not what Jell-O is for.” That really gives a good flavor of how doctrinally amorphous that movement was.

2010s: Justification and Ecumenism

In the 2010s, the doctrine of justification was very controverted and prominent. I wrote a whole book, The Future of Justification, responding to N.T. Wright. On the same front, friends of mine were involved relationally in some very difficult conversations called Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which broke some hearts over how good Reformed brothers didn’t relate to Catholics in the same way.

2020s: The Swirling Decade

Which brings us then swirling into the last decade with the splintering of evangelicalism because of Trump, the realities of so-called “same-sex marriage,” the realities of so-called “gender transition,” vaccination mandates, critical race theory, systemic racism, cancel culture. None of these things can be ignored by a pastor — I think, indeed, by a thoughtful layperson — and I’ve written on virtually all of them.

Go Deep with God

But the point for that TableTalk — and maybe for this moment in Ask Pastor John — is this: if you live long enough, you will be confronted by issues and controversies that are so many and so diverse and sometimes so complex that you cannot possibly predict or specifically prepare for them. The best way for our students and our listeners to APJ to prepare for faithful, obedient, fruitful ministry in the next fifty years is to know your Bible deeply, thoroughly, confidently, joyfully.

Other studies are important, absolutely important. This study of the Bible is essential. If you have gone deep with God by means of a rigorous and accurate understanding of his word, you’ll always be relevant, and you’ll never be speechless.