I love to listen to my younger teaching colleagues at Desiring God when they describe their lives as fathers of young children. I smile (sometimes inwardly) to hear of the short nights, the energy-demanding days, and the challenges of discerning how to fulfill their callings as fathers alongside their other demanding callings as husbands, vocational ministers, and significantly invested members and leaders in their local churches. I smile because I remember. That was me two decades ago, though it feels like yesterday.

When our twins were born in December 2004, our other three children were eight, six, and not yet two years old. I was in the thick of learning how to be a father while also overseeing a rapidly growing ministry (Desiring God) and also serving as an elder, worship-ministry leader, and small-group leader in our church. I remember all the wrestling, counsel-seeking, and book-reading I did as a young father. I remember the second-guessing, the trials-and-errors, and what must have been thousands of conversations with my wife, Pam. I remember times we felt in over our heads. I remember all those difficult decisions and course corrections we made together along the way. And I remember many — only God knows how many — earnest, sometimes desperate prayers we prayed together.

Those were full, busy, often trying years. But what makes me smile as I listen to my godly young colleagues is remembering mainly how wonderful those years were — a perspective one tends to see clearer in retrospect than in the messy, muddling middle of it all.

Fresh Reflections of an Older Father

A few weeks ago, our twins graduated high school, ending more than a quarter-century of shepherding our five children from birth to adulthood. Which makes me something of a veteran father (though certainly not an expert). So, my colleagues wondered if I’d be willing to write down some words of counsel for fathers of young children. While I could say many things, here are three lessons that I find myself frequently reflecting on these days.

1. Teach them with your life.

The most memorable things you are likely to teach your children are the beliefs you clearly embody. Let me share two ways this has recently hit home.

My wife and I both have parents who recently celebrated milestone birthdays: my mother turned ninety in 2022, and Pam’s father turned eighty this spring. And both of us prepared tributes in their honor. In mine, I described the incalculable impact my mother had on me as I watched the ways she sacrificially loved and served disabled people in Jesus’s name — typified in how she loved the vulnerable little disabled girl that she and my father adopted into our family. In Pam’s tribute to her father, she described the incalculable impact his deep, manifest love for Jesus had on her — typified in the worshipful tears he shed as she sat next to him during Good Friday services when she was very young.

“The most memorable things you are likely to teach your children are the beliefs you clearly embody.”

What’s revealing about these tributes is that, among all the intentional ways our parents sought to teach us when we were young, what stood out to us were ways they unintentionally taught us. My mother didn’t sacrificially love and minister to disabled people in order to teach me. Her love flowed out of her heart; it was part of who she was. Pam’s father didn’t express his tearful, grateful love for Jesus in order to teach Pam. His love flowed out of his heart; it was part of who he was.

Now that our own kids have reached adulthood, they’ve been reflecting on their childhoods and describing ways Pam and I influenced them. Their descriptions are similarly revealing. For all the intentional time and effort I put into our morning Bible times and family devotions, none of my children (yet) have included those in their descriptions. What stands out to them are memories of our imperfect faith and love as they manifested in the unprogrammed, unpolished, unscripted moments of life — ways we unintentionally taught them.

That neither I nor my children highlight intentional Bible teaching times when recalling our parents’ influence doesn’t mean those times were unimportant — they were important. It’s just that most of our intentional teaching times serve the slow, gradual, cumulative process of our children’s knowledge acquisition, and those times usually don’t imprint as clearly in their memories as epiphany moments, when they see ways we actually live what we believe.

Therefore, your most powerful and memorable teaching moments are likely to occur when you’re not consciously trying to teach your children at all. They will most clearly remember what flows out of your heart as part of who you are. Your children will most clearly remember the Bible teaching you embody.

2. Be patient with your green peaches.

My daughter Eliana is among the most patient, even-keeled people I know. She has a faith in Jesus that functions as a substantial ballast in the boat of her soul. As a result, she’s a calm, stabilizing presence when there’s relational conflict, and a tranquil, reassuring presence for anxious souls. Not surprisingly, then, as a mother, she’s a remarkably patient and wise presence for her three young children.

But Eliana wasn’t always patient and even-keeled. When she was young, her precocious mind, determined will, quick wit, and extensive vocabulary could make her a formidable force. When she didn’t agree with a parental decision (which was often), she had an innate ability to argue like a skilled courtroom lawyer. And when she got angry (which was not infrequent), she could wield her words like a rapier. Too often, I responded too quickly and too strongly and sinfully to the ways her immaturity and her own sin manifested when she was a child.

Now as I watch Eliana wisely and patiently respond to challenges from her own young, bright, eloquent children, I see more clearly ways I could have served young Eliana more effectively. It makes me wish that as a younger father I had had more of the wise, gracious patience of a man like Henry Venn.

Rev. Venn (1724–1797) was a spiritual mentor to the eventually influential Charles Simeon (1759–1836) and pastored a church not far from the church Simeon served in Cambridge, England. When Simeon was still a young minister, he could be “somewhat harsh and self-assertive.” Once, when Simeon had left the Venn home after one of his frequent visits, Henry’s daughters complained to their father about Simeon’s abrasive arrogance. The wise older pastor responded by gesturing to a peach tree in the back garden and saying,

“Pick me one of those peaches.” But it was early summer, and “the time of peaches was not yet.” They asked why he would want the green, unripe fruit. Venn replied, “Well, my dears, it is green now, and we must wait; but a little more sun, and a few more showers, and the peach will be ripe and sweet. So it is with Mr. Simeon.” (27 Servants of Sovereign Joy, 321)

So it was with Eliana.

“Graciously view your children as green peaches that require patient tending over the years of child-rearing.”

Beware the premature assumptions that your young children’s challenging behavior can produce in you. In my experience, such assumptions have usually been inaccurate. James’s instruction that we be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19) is excellent counsel for fathers. Choose to graciously view your children as green peaches that require patient tending over the years of child-rearing. With time and consistent love (in all its tender and firm expressions), they will ripen with “a little more sun, and a few more showers.”

3. Give grace to their failures.

The longer I’ve been a father, the more I’ve reflected on the father of the Prodigal Son from Jesus’s beautiful parable (Luke 15:11–32). And the older my children have become, the more moved I have been by the way that wandering son thought of his father after his miserable and disastrous failure.

Having broken his father’s heart and wasted the wealth his father had given him, whom did he finally turn to for help after his selfish, sinful pursuits left him destitute? The very father he had dishonored. Why? I think it’s because this son knew his father’s heart. He knew his father was “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). He knew that if he turned to his father, he would find a refuge from his self-afflicted misery.

Reading this parable now, as a more experienced father, I hear in the son’s rehearsed repentant speech not the young man’s fear of his father’s rejection, but an anticipation of his kindness — a fundamental kindness that had always been a refuge of safety for this failing son. In his readiness to forgo his sonship, I hear his weight of guilt and shame, how unworthy he felt to receive the mercy he was likely to meet when he returned home. And yet (at least it seems to me), it was his father’s kindness that was leading him to repent (Romans 2:4).

As a father, you will want to do your best to guide your children away from making sinful choices that grieve you. But of course, you will not fully succeed. So, among the most wonderful, Godlike gifts you can give your children, even from their earliest days, is becoming a refuge of mercy, grace, steadfast love, and faithfulness when they fail. This will not necessarily prevent them from someday launching off on some prodigal path. But they are not likely to forget your kindness — and someday, that kindness might be the means of grace God uses to lead them home.

Long Days, Short Time

I don’t remember where I first heard this quote, but it captures a poignant truth: “When our children are young, the days are long, but the time is short.” One day you’re herding them like cats into the car, and then suddenly you look over and they’re driving the car. One day you’re watching your squirmy second grader sing in a school recital, and then suddenly you’re watching him receive his diploma. And you wonder where all that time went.

Though you’ve likely heard it a hundred times already, this will occur faster than you think. Soon, you will find yourself saying it to younger fathers. And smiling to yourself.

When your children are young, do your best to keep the long game in view. If you embody the love of Jesus in your spheres of calling (albeit imperfectly), deal patiently with your “green peaches” as they ripen toward maturity (albeit imperfectly), and seek to become a safe refuge of mercy, grace, steadfast love, and faithfulness when your children fail (albeit imperfectly), you will heap priceless blessings on them. This isn’t a formula that will ensure they embrace Christ. But you will leave them a legacy of Christlike love they will never forget; a fragrance of Christ that will long linger in their memories.

For nearly four centuries, the frequency of abortion in America has depended on how citizens and residents answered five questions:

Anatomy: Is the being in the womb human?

Bible: Is Scripture’s teaching on the sacredness of human life binding on us?

Community: What kind of advice and support do vulnerable women receive from boyfriends or husbands, parents or friends, employers, or anyone to whom a woman might look for emotional and financial help?

Danger to women: What is the likelihood of an abortion ending with not just one victim but two?

Enforcement: In what informal and formal ways do those with influence and resources protect the most vulnerable?

How do we answer these questions today? One article does not provide enough space to spin out each of these threads historically (if you want to read more, Leah Savas and I have done that in our book, The Story of Abortion in America). But some changes are evident: Americans now have more awareness than ever before of what unborn children look like, and less knowledge of what the Bible teaches. The influence of community and the possibility of enforcement have fluctuated over the years. The danger to women has sharply declined. Let’s unpack these changes one by one.

‘A’ Is for Anatomy

The most popular seventeenth-century guide to pregnancy and fetal anatomy, The Midwives Book, echoed ancient and medieval contentions that unborn children have “first the life of a Plant, then of a Beast, and lastly of a Man.” But in 1839 Dr. Hugh Hodge, brother of theologian Charles Hodge, spoke of the unborn child’s continuous development from conception.

Other doctors conveyed Hodge’s teaching to their patients, who without seeing an unborn child were proceeding on faith. A breakthrough in popular understanding came at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, where more than two million people waited in line to view twenty-four sculptures that showed human development in the womb. The next mass education came in 1965 when a Life magazine cover showed Lennart Nilsson’s photograph of an unborn child floating within an amniotic sac. This issue was Life’s all-time fastest seller at checkout counters. And now, 3D and 4D ultrasound lets a woman see not a baby but her baby.

‘B’ Is for Bible

In an era of frequent Bible reading that lasted until early in the twentieth century, it was hard to miss God’s creative involvement in human life from its beginning. Colonists read in the Psalms, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Luke, Galatians, and other books, not only that we are made in God’s image, but that he “knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).

Bible readers and hearers also imbibed sensational detail about what evildoers do to unborn children. When an Israelite town did not surrender to an evil king, “he ripped open all the women in it who were pregnant” (2 Kings 15:16). Hosea prophesied that “Samaria shall bear her guilt . . . their pregnant women [shall be] ripped open” (Hosea 13:16). The Ammonites were guilty because “they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead, that they might enlarge their border” (Amos 1:13).

Volumes other than the Bible, like The Midwives Book, featured the sacred and secular overlapping seamlessly. Jane Sharp quoted from or alluded to the Bible at least thirty times. She twice referred to Psalm 139’s “knitted me together,” but also noted Genesis 1, 2, 3, 4, 17, 29, and 30, as well as other passages from Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, Psalms 113 and 127, Matthew, John, Acts, and Hebrews. Sharp frequently referred to “the law of God,” “the laws of God,” and “the blessings of God.”

Pastors in early America cited the Bible in speaking out against abortion. In 1869 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America declared that it viewed “the destruction by parents of their own offspring before birth with abhorrence.” But in 1908 Dr. Walter Dorsett at an American Medical Association convention complained that “Few sermons are preached from the pulpit for fear of shocking the delicate feelings of a fashionably dressed congregation.”

Some pastors were bold, but avoiding any mention of abortion was common in churches during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. WORLD surveyed pastors in the 1990s and the 2010s. While some such as John Piper spoke out, I could accurately headline the articles “Silence of the Shepherds” I and II. The A and B trends — more anatomical knowledge, less Bible knowledge — pretty much canceled each other out.

In early America, as the delightfully named book Sex in Middlesex (the Massachusetts county I grew up in) showed, community pressure on young men meant that pregnant, unmarried women could generally count on marriage before going into labor. If young men hesitated, old men intervened. They rarely needed shotguns, but every father had one.

The growth of large cities beginning in the 1830s broke down community protection and left more women and children at risk. Pastor Isaac Ferris in the Mercer St. Presbyterian Church spoke to three hundred young New Yorkers in 1852 and said an apprentice or clerk a generation earlier lived with his employer’s family, “but now it is sadly altered. The lad is left on the wide world — he is surrounded by the mercenary and the callous.” Self-indulgence with no supervision left young men in a moral maelstrom.

Ferris jump-started the YMCA movement as a way to form new communities, and YWCAs soon followed. Unmarried women surprised by pregnancy often went to homes away from home. Some had non-euphemistic names like the Erring Women’s Refuge. Starting in the 1970s crisis pregnancy centers tried to create supportive communities. Many pastors, even if they did not speak about abortion, prodded their congregations to support compassionate alternatives to abortion.

‘D’ Is for Danger

Until the 1830s abortion was often fatal for the mother as well as the child. Ingesting an abortifacient was playing Russian roulette: Place a bullet in a revolver, spin the cylinder, point the muzzle at your head, pull the trigger. Letting an abortionist invade a uterus was the equivalent of two bullets in the cylinder. Only utter desperation, or unrelenting pressure from an unloving lover, would lead a woman to accept a one-third risk of death.

At that time surgical abortion hadn’t changed much in two millennia. Around the year AD 200, the theologian Tertullian described how an abortionist inserted into the uterus “an annular blade, by means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected,” along with a blunt gripper “wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.”

The surgical trauma was bad enough, but then infection arrived. Abortion became a little less dangerous for mothers when specialists with steady hands and extensive experience began doing more abortions than neighborhood hacks. In the late nineteenth century, knowledge of antisepsis spread: Cleanliness in abortion was not next to godliness, but the Maryland Court of Appeals in 1901 recognized the difference antiseptic procedure made when it declared, with some tunnel vision, that “death is not now the usual . . . consequence of an abortion.”

As use of antibiotics spread after World War II, the concerns about personal danger that had kept some women from obtaining abortions dropped steadily. New York City went from 144 abortion deaths in 1921 to 15 in 1951. The number kept declining: Although abortion propagandists in the 1960s claimed “thousands” of women were dying in abortions, Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Calderone acknowledged in 1960 that for women, “Abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure.”

‘E’ Is for Enforcement

In the late nineteenth century newspapers regularly reported that abortion was arousing “intense feeling.” The Wisconsin State Journal reported an arrest “on the charge of seduction and abortion made by the parents of a girl 14 years old. . . . The arrest causes intense feeling.” But with all the intensity, it was still hard to lock up abortionists.

In 1904, Dr. Rudolph Holmes successfully urged the Chicago Medical Society to create a Committee on Criminal Abortion. Holmes became chairman and pushed his colleagues to try “influencing the daily press to discontinue criminal advertisements.” Abortion was illegal in Illinois and every other state, but the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers still ran thinly veiled ads for it. Holmes visited editors who dropped the ads, particularly when postal authorities issued a stop order against mail delivery of publications sustaining abortion.

By 1910, though, Holmes was despairing. He noted in a medical journal that abortionists, denied newspaper advertising space, printed business cards and distributed them through brothels and rooming-house landlords. He said Chicago abortionists had their own legal department, with witnesses on tap and ready to swear that “the young woman had an operation elsewhere and the doctor was merely performing a life-saving operation.” He said the coroner’s office investigated not more than one percent of abortion deaths in Chicago: “The persons who perform the operations find it easy to cover up their tracks, and it is difficult to get witnesses to testify in cases of this kind.”

Doctors in other cities shared Holmes’s pessimism about enforcement. In 1912 Dr. M.S. Iseman offered an acidic city-by-city tour of how laws were not working at street level. During five years in Washington, D.C., thousands of abortions led to “only nine indictments for abortion and three convictions — not enough to do more than to slow down slightly the traffic to abort.” In New York City, abortion was rampant but “in some years not a single indictment follows. . . . It is difficult to say which is the stronger attraction for the lady visitors to the metropolis — the horseshow, the opera, or the gynecologist.” In Atlanta, “After years of suspended animation, the police made a solitary arrest for the crime of abortion.”

The Heart-Changer

Moving forward a century to a time when more people call themselves pro-choice than pro-life, we should be aware of the limitations of enforcement in red states, particularly in their blue cities. It’s hard for me to believe that a jury of twelve randomly chosen people in my city would ever imprison an abortionist. With danger to the mother no longer a deterrent, and wherever enforcement is unlikely, the ABCs — anatomy, Bible, community — are the bulwarks for life against death.

That realization is especially important now that American society suffers from structural abortionism. The frequent corporate response to Dobbs — paying travel costs to legal-abortion states for employees in pro-life states — shows abortion’s economic role. Many organizations structure their workforce on the assumption that young female employees will always be available to show up in the office for full-time work. Corporate and government offices, instead of pretending that differences between men and women of childbearing age don’t exist, should and could be more creative in promoting shared jobs, flextime, on-site infant care including feeding times, work from home, and other pro-life scheduling.

Beyond economics, we should also recognize that an underlying cause for many abortions, like much of homelessness, is the catastrophic loss of relationships. Churches can and should be gospel-formed communities that communicate to unhappily pregnant women: There’s room here for you.

Pro-lifers in deep blue states may despair, but in one respect they may have an advantage. To be successful, laws restricting abortion need to pedal in tandem with lives devoted to expanding compassion. In red states the temptation will be to put politics in the front seat. In states where protective laws are so dead-on-arrival that millions of babies are likely to be dead pre-arrival, changed hearts are the only hope — and the gospel is a heart-changer.

Joe tracked me down one day. With desperation in his voice, he pleaded that I help him resolve a crisis moment. As a seminary student, he was overwrought with thoughts that he didn’t belong in seminary. He ticked off several reasons for his doubt. He went to class, and his mind wandered. He attempted to do course assignments, but he couldn’t care less. He was tired of exegeting biblical passages and developing theological convictions. He felt listless in his relationship with God. And he entertained strong doubts about his sense of call to ministry.

Joe certainly isn’t alone in experiencing such doubts about his ministry aspirations while in seminary. So, how should a student respond if he enrolled in seminary with great expectations and wide-eyed wonder, only to find himself in such a faith crisis sometime during his studies? As a longtime seminary professor, I have counseled students with at least three lessons.

Don’t Be Surprised

A good place to start is the apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 1:29: “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” As a seminary student, you are preparing for Christian ministry, and Satan hates Christian ministry. He will attack your faith and try to disturb your hope, derailing you from God’s call and future plans for you. Also, the world — people who are hostile toward God and systems that are ungodly — has you in its sights to entice unbelief and destroy you. And of course, your own sinful nature rears its ugly head and seeks to drag you away from such a calling.

How should you respond to these three enemies? Don’t yield to Satan’s trickery: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Direct your heart toward God and away from the world: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). Depend on the Holy Spirit: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

“Ask veteran saints around you about their experience of doubt, and know that you are not alone in the fight.”

What you experience is common to all of us who have been in seminary. Indeed, “do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12–13). Ask veteran saints around you about their experience of doubt, and know that you are not alone in the fight.

Don’t Stay for the Wrong Reasons

This kind of experience is also a good opportunity to carefully assess the reason(s) you enrolled in seminary. Are you there because your grandfather and father (who were pastors before you) expect you to become a pastor too? Or maybe you assume that they expect you to become a pastor (though that’s not actually true of them). And if you’re honest with yourself, you’d rather be a dentist or an educator. But if you were to take that other direction, you’d no longer be on “God’s A-team.” You’d be settling for his second best.

Now, if you have a very sensitive conscience, please don’t apply the above discussion to yourself so that you doubt what you know as God’s leading to seminary. Rather, if you’re in seminary to please others (granddad and dad), or if you’re looking for people to admire you because you’re on the elite squad (and that doesn’t include examining braces or educating biologists), please reconsider your plans.

Switching from theology to thermodynamics, if that’s how God has wired and gifted you, may be the right step — not the embarrassing or shameful step — to take. And it may calm any doubts that have arisen from wrongly attending seminary.

Don’t Consider Doubt a Virtue

Lastly, don’t yield to the popular contemporary move to embrace doubt as a proper posture for Christians. Jesus rebuked his disciples as men “of little faith” when they questioned his ability to provide for their basic needs (Matthew 6:30). They feared for their life though he was ready to rescue them (Matthew 8:26). They were in full panic mode when threatened by their surroundings (Matthew 14:31). They disbelieved his vivid examples of provision (Matthew 16:8). They wondered why they failed when they didn’t trust Jesus and his power (Matthew 17:20). Jesus rebuked doubt as misguided.

Oppositely, Jesus healed people in response to their stunning faith. One example is his healing of two blind men: Jesus “touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’ And their eyes were opened” (Matthew 9:29–30). As a woman with a persistent discharge of blood touched him, “Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’ And instantly the woman was made well” (Matthew 9:22). As for the leper whose skin was made whole, Jesus “said to him, ‘Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well’” (Luke 17:19). As these narratives are offered to underscore the necessity of faith, we rightly conclude that these miracles would not have happened if doubt had won the day.

Moreover, Scripture celebrates men and women who, though in dire straits, refused to cave in to doubt but remained steadfastly faithful. Abraham is so extolled:

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:18–21)

Likewise, Scripture applauds Sarah for her persistent trust in the face of an impossibility: “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11).

“Don’t give way to the faddish fixation on doubt as a virtue.”

So, don’t give way to the faddish fixation on doubt as a virtue. Faith is a fruit of the Spirit. It is ignited by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). It is directed not inwardly but outwardly toward Christ and his gospel of grace. Even if assailed by doubt and shaken by temptations and trials, faith will prevail when it is riveted on the divine promises of our faithful God.

End of a Faith Crisis

This proved to be Joe’s experience. When he initially approached me with his concerns and fears, my heart went out to him. Though I and others were confident about God’s calling on his life (which I believed included completion of seminary studies in preparation for church ministry), I was grieved that Joe was facing such a test of his faith.

For several weeks, we met together, poring over the biblical passages noted above, examining how to overcome the distractions to his studies, praying for a renewed sense of God’s presence and provision, and envisioning the fruitful ministry that could open up in front of him. By God’s grace and Joe’s persistence, he moved from disabling doubt to robust faith in God’s call on his life.

If you, like Joe, didn’t sign up for a “faith crisis” class in seminary, but find yourself in one nonetheless, I hope and pray the same outcome will be true of you.

Have you ever wondered why we Christians so often sing about Jesus’s blood? It’s a very strange thing to emphasize, is it not? Not simply the cross and his death, but his blood. Just last Sunday, our church sang twice about the blood of Jesus. First in an old hymn: “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?” Then in a newer song: “By his blood and in his name, in his freedom I am free.”

Growing up in the South, I often sang, “There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-workin’ pow’r in the blood of the Lamb.” That was my dad’s favorite. Or one that many of us know: “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

We Bible-believing Christians do not simply recognize the reality of Jesus’s blood and refer on occasion to Jesus’s blood, but we sing about it. We glory in it. That is, in a spirit of worship, in declaring Jesus’s worth to each other, and in praising him for his greatness, we often sing about the otherwise morbid topic of blood.

Have you ever stopped to ask why? What is it about Jesus’s blood that makes us sing? How does his blood work? What does it do? If someone asks you, “Hey, so how does the blood work?” how would you respond? Would you be at a loss to explain it?

As well as any passage in the Bible, Hebrews 9:15–22 explains it. In one of the densest and most complex and richest chapters in the Bible, we learn why it was necessary for Jesus to die — and not just die but shed his blood. You could say that this sermon is an attempt to explain why we sing about Jesus’s blood. Not just talk, but sing! We worship him in light of his “precious blood” (as 1 Peter 1:19 calls it), and we should know why.

At the Heart of Hebrews

Hebrews 9:1–10 rehearses the setup of the old covenant tabernacle, related to the Day of Atonement, and first mentions the essential place of blood to cover sins in verse 7.

Then Hebrews 9:11–14, which is the high point of chapters 8–10, summarizes the achievement of Christ at the cross in contrast with the old system. In the first covenant, the high priests entered the earthly tent with animal blood offered according to law, which temporarily purified the flesh. But Jesus is a superior priest who has entered heaven itself by means of his own blood offered willingly, which eternally purifies the conscience.

Which brings us to verse 15, where Hebrews says, “Therefore . . .” In light of these marked contrasts with the first covenant (and the superiorities of Christ), the terms of arrangement for sinners to relate to God must be different. Jesus mediates a new covenant. Not renewed. Not added on. Not extending the previous administration with some nice upgrades. New.

Now, in verses 15–22, Hebrews will show us, in covenantal terms, why Jesus had to die — that is, why it was necessary for him to shed sacrificial blood.

Oh, the Blood

Blood was introduced in verse 7. Then blood appears four more times in verses 12–14. Then six more times in verses 18–22. Then again in verse 25. And four times verses 15–17 refer to death, which is essentially synonymous with blood in this context.

That’s what blood symbolizes here: sacrificial death, or life sacrificially taken. The death in view here is not a natural, bloodless death. Rather, blood represents life that has been violently taken, life ended early, for sacrificial purposes. One party bleeds (to the point of death) in order to stand in for the sins of another who deserved death, but now, through the sacrifice and by God’s provision, continues to live.

The reason this matters in the context of a covenant with God is because of human sin. We all have disobeyed and dishonored the infinitely valuable God, and our offenses, however small they seem, are infinitely great because of the value of the one we’ve sinned against. Verse 14 mentions “dead works” — that is, acts that deserve and lead to death because they have been perpetrated against the infinitely valuable God.

So, God’s people deserve death. And in order for God to draw near to his people and for them to draw near to him in a covenant relationship of ongoing life, their sin must be addressed. Under the terms of the old covenant, God made provision for the sin of his people through animal blood (that is, life violently and sacrificially taken) to stand in temporarily to hold back his righteous judgment — while anticipating some final reckoning with sin to come.

What Does the Blood Do?

And so, everywhere you turn in Leviticus, blood is being shed (mentioned almost one hundred times in chapters 1–20). Now, here in Hebrews 9, there is blood and sacrificial death all through verses 12–22. Which leads us to ask, What does Jesus’s blood do? Or, How does the cross work? What is the blood of the new covenant for?

There are at least three answers in Hebrews 9:15–22.

1. Jesus’s blood redeems from former sins.

Remember the original audience, Greek-speaking Jews. They grew up in the Jewish faith and came to embrace Jesus as Messiah, but now they are becoming sluggish in their faith. The passing years and ever-present pull of the world have made them spiritually dull. They are tempted to give in to their world’s pressures and just reacclimate to Jewish life apart from Jesus.

So, Hebrews appeals to them, again and again, that Jesus and his priesthood and his sacrifice and his new covenant are better. And in fact, once Jesus has come, the old covenant has come to its planned fulfillment and is no longer valid (“no longer any offering for sin,” Hebrews 10:18). You cannot go back.

In verse 15, we see Hebrews’s focus on Jews, his audience, those who once lived under the old covenant: “[Jesus] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.”

Hebrews’s audience needs to know how Jesus’s new covenant relates to the old and to the status of their obligations in their former covenant. And so verse 15 tells them how Jesus’s death, his sacrificial blood, redeems them from any debt of obligation they once had under the old covenant. The old arrangement is dead; you owe it nothing further.

What About Gentiles?

But what about us Gentiles? Here we are, on the other side of the world, two thousand years later, most (if not all) of us totally Gentile. If Jesus’s death “redeems . . . from the transgressions committed under the first covenant,” how does his blood relate to those of us who never lived under the old covenant?

The rest of the sermon is about that, but in verse 15, notice that phrase “those who are called.” This is where we Gentiles come in. The death of Christ not only redeems Jews but also Gentiles. As Paul says in Romans 1:16, “The gospel . . . is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

And twice Paul writes about “those who are called, both Jews and Greeks” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and “even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (Romans 9:24). The “called” are not Jews alone, but also Gentiles. Hebrews has his particular Jewish audience in view, but when he mentions “those who are called,” we see our window.

Romans, we might say, explains the gospel to Romans, to Gentiles, to the Greeks, with special reference to Roman legal categories of justice and righteousness; meanwhile, Hebrews explains the gospel to Hebrews, to Jews, with special reference to Hebrew cultic categories of holiness and purification.

Which is the reason many of us Gentiles find Romans easier to understand. We don’t understand Leviticus very well, and the sacrificial system, and priests and sacrifices and blood. But that’s why Hebrews can be so valuable to us Gentiles: we get to know our gospel in multiple dimensions — not only in Roman-Gentile terms, but also in Jewish-Levitical terms.

All Are Accountable

Also, for us Gentiles, Romans 3:19 says something very similar to Hebrews 9:15 about how God’s revelation to the Jews relates to us: “Whatever the law [that is, the old covenant] says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.”

God speaking in and through the law, the old covenant, is relevant to us as Gentiles — not as our covenant but as our Scripture — to stop our mouths and hold us accountable for our sin. “The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2) that it might be made clear that “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (Romans 3:9).

So, Romans and Hebrews are well named. Romans explains to Gentiles why Jesus had to die. Hebrews explains to Jews why Jesus had to die. And God’s first covenant with the Jews showed not only them their sinfulness and need of Christ’s final atoning sacrifice, but also us Gentiles. There is a kind of organic relationship between what God specifically requires of his first-covenant people and the accountability of all humans, Jew and Gentile, to the God who made them.

So, what does the blood of the new covenant do? First, for Christ’s new covenant people, Jesus’s blood redeems from former sins.

2. Jesus’s blood enacts a new covenant.

The blood of Christ not only releases Jewish and Gentile sinners from their former sins, but also enacts a new covenant. The ending of the old arrangement takes sacrificial blood, as does inaugurating the new.

Now, verses 16–17 are very difficult. Verse 15 mentions an “inheritance,” and verses 16–17 mention “death,” and many commentators and translations think that Hebrews here jumps from talking to his Hebrew readers about Hebrew covenants to a Greco-Roman last will and testament. You’ll see the ESV has the word will in verses 16–17. I think that’s a mistake, and a growing number of Hebrews scholars do as well. Before I read verses 16–17, let me give you five quick reasons why “will” doesn’t work here, and why it should say “covenant”:

Verse 15 mentions the new and first covenants; verse 18 mentions the first covenant; chapters 7–9 have clearly been talking about a Hebrew covenant, the old covenant, not a Roman will. Hebrews uses the word for “covenant” 17 times in chapters 7–13, and every other time, it clearly means “covenant.”
It is not true that a will takes effect only at death; a will takes effect as soon as it is made. It is executed at death (well, after death), but only because it took effect previously. However, a Hebraic covenant, as we see in Exodus 24 with the inauguration of the first covenant, does take effect precisely at death — namely, the death of the sacrificial victims in the covenant-ratifying ceremony.
The word behind “death” in verse 17 is plural; verse 16 mentions “the one [singular] who made it,” but verse 17 references plural deaths, which refer not to the death of a person who made a will but to the sacrificial victims that were “cut” and bled and died in the cutting of the covenant.
The syntax and logical flow of verses 15–18 do not work if the meaning of the same Greek word (diatheke) switches from Hebraic covenant to Greco-Roman will and back. The passage is very tightly knit together with “for” at the beginning of verses 16 and 17 and “therefore” in verse 18.
Finally, the word for “established” in verse 16 (phero) would be better rendered as “carried forward” or “brought forward.” This is sacrificial language. The death owed by sinful people who are making a covenant with God is “brought forward” in the sacrificial victims’ blood to make purification for sins, so that sinners might enter into covenant with the holy God.

We could say more, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Now let me read verses 16–20, accounting for Hebraic covenant rather than Roman will, and then explain how it relates to the blood of Jesus. Here’s my version of verses 16–20:

For where a [covenant with God] is involved, the death of the one who made it must be [brought forward]. For a [covenant] takes effect only [with the death of sacrificial victims], since it is not in force as long as the one who made it [and deserves death because of his sin still lives]. Therefore [because of human sin] not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood [in Exodus 24]. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.”

I know that’s complicated and a lot to take in all at once. Here’s the payoff: Jesus’s blood not only redeems us from the death penalty of our former sins, but his blood provides purification from sin to enact a new covenant relationship with God. Former sins must be dealt with, but also the ongoing sinful condition of our hearts if we are to enter into a covenant relationship with God. Jesus’s blood makes possible life with God in a new covenant arrangement. It is the covenant-ratifying blood.

“God’s arrangement is that sacrificial blood purifies sinners, so that they can enter into communion with him.”

When Moses said in Exodus 24:8, at the inauguration of the first covenant, “Behold the blood of the covenant,” the meaning of “the blood” — in however many meanings it may have had — is at least this (according to Hebrews 9): forgiveness of sins. That’s what verse 22 says, as we’ll see. God’s arrangement is that sacrificial blood purifies sinners, so that they can enter into communion with him. This is what “the blood of the covenant” does.

So, Jesus’s blood redeems from former sins, and it enacts a new covenant.

3. Jesus’s blood upholds the new covenant.

Just as sacrificial blood not only inaugurated the old covenant, but it endured and operated on sacrificial blood at every turn, so Jesus’s blood not only enacts the new covenant but sustains it, upholds it, maintains it, keeps it going.

Hebrews hints at this in chapter 9 by expanding his focus from the inauguration of the old covenant in Exodus 24 to the annual Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16, and beyond to other sacrifices as well. He already begins that expansion in Hebrews 9:19 when he mentions “and . . . goats” and “water and scarlet wool and hyssop” (none of which are mentioned in Exodus 24 but brought in from elsewhere in the old covenant).

Then the expansion is more pronounced in verses 21–22: “And in the same way [Moses] sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Not just the people, but also the tent and all the vessels.

And then comes the sweeping claim of verse 22 that in the old covenant “almost everything is purified with blood.” Which leads into verses 23–28, where the focus is on Jesus entering into the holy place that is heaven itself, and doing so not annually (like the Day of Atonement) but once for all.

Jesus not only inaugurates a new covenant, but (as verse 15 says) he mediates it. His blood is “for all time,” as Hebrews 10:14 will tell us: “By a single offering [Jesus] has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

And to be clear, Hebrews 9:22 states the underlying point in this otherwise complicated passage: both the inaugurating and maintaining of a new covenant with the holy God deal with the sins of the people.

So, according to Hebrews 9, “the blood of the covenant” does at least three things: (1) it redeems from former sins (and for Jews cancels any obligation to the first covenant), (2) it enacts a new covenant relationship of life with God, and (3) it upholds that new covenant “for all time.” And all that because the sacrificial blood of Christ decisively “deals with” or “puts away” or forgives our sins.

Great in the Blood of the Covenant

Now, there is at least one more detail in this chapter, and in Hebrews, that I can’t help but mention as we close. Look at verse 12: “[Jesus] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” What does it mean that Jesus entered into heaven “by means of his own blood”?

What it does not mean is that this High Priest needed blood to cleanse him from sin. That’s an important contrast with the old. The old high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year, says verse 7, “not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.” But not Jesus. He has no sin. So then, what is the function of his blood when he enters heaven “by means of his own blood”?

The answer is clarified by the great doxology of Hebrews in 13:20–21, where “the blood of the covenant” appears again. The question is, What does the blood of the covenant do here?

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

It’s hard to show in an English translation, but the phrase “in the blood of the eternal covenant” modifies the word great. A literal translation would read, “. . . the shepherd of the sheep, the great one in the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus . . .”

Which means, the blood Jesus shed, the blood of the eternal (new) covenant, is a mark of Jesus’s greatness. It is an achievement, the greatest achievement in the history of the world, that merits reward. Like Hebrews 9:12, “He entered once for all into the holy places . . . by means of his own blood.”

Jesus’s blood not only accomplishes our salvation; it shows us his greatness and worth. His sacrificial blood not only deals with our sin but shows us the greatness of the one for whom our hearts long. We not only receive forgiveness; we worship. We not only thank him for his blood. We praise the one whose very greatness we see in the shedding of his blood for us. And so we sing about his blood.

New Covenant in His Blood

As we come to the Table, we find sweet confirmation for what Jesus means by “the new covenant in my blood” when he instituted the Supper on the night before he died.

Luke 22:20 says Jesus called it a “new covenant”: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And Matthew 26:28 clarifies what the blood of the covenant does: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Former sins forgiven, and a new covenant inaugurated and sustained — by his blood. And in the blood of his eternal covenant, we see his greatness, and come in worship, and drink together the cup of blessing.

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.

Have you seen the recent “colored book” decoration trend? The basic idea is to take books whose covers have the same basic palette and put them together, thereby arranging all your books by color. Some used bookstores are even offering bundles of all-blue, all-green, or all-yellow books that you can buy just for this purpose.

If you’re anything like me, you understand why this trend might be appealing, but at the same time, something in you recoils. To see books thrown together just for the color of their covers, or to see books being sold not for what they say but for what they look like, seems to betray the very idea of a book. Something inside me protests, That’s not what books are for!

A kind of alarm goes off inside us when we see something used far beneath its purpose. And the truth is, this doesn’t happen just with the physical exteriors of books. It happens with what’s inside of them too. Have you ever wondered what it means to read like a Christian? Surely it means more than being a Christian and reading. There are precious realities that shape and season what and how we read. Let me commend five principles that help and challenge me to read like a Christian.

1. Read whimsically, not wastefully.

By whimsically, I mean literally “at whim.” My teacher in this regard has been Alan Jacobs, whose lovely little book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction makes a compelling case for reading “what gives you delight” (23) rather than what conforms to abstract standards of literary greatness. In other words, Christians do not think of their reading as primarily the fulfillment of a duty, but as an astonishing joy. This doesn’t exclude a place for a Great Books canon. But there is a difference between seeking out a book because others esteem it and may esteem you for reading it (more on that in a moment) and seeking out a book because its greatness promises delight.

“Christians should not think of their reading as primarily the fulfillment of a duty, but as an astonishing joy.”

Whim, however, does not mean waste. There is a way to waste your reading, and the fastest way to do this is to never stretch yourself beyond your natural comfort zone. Many readers who never try anything more demanding than a badly written paperback don’t realize how much more delight they could have by maturing their palate. If reading at whim can protect us from elitism, not reading wastefully is a reminder that good and bad are not wholly in the eye of the beholder. Excellence should delight us. We were made for a beatific vision of pure splendor and perfection. Don’t waste your reading.

2. Read personally, not performatively.

One of my favorite passages in The Screwtape Letters occurs after the demon Wormwood has apparently “lost” his patient to a profound and genuine repentance. Uncle Screwtape furiously berates his nephew for his “blunders.”

You first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. . . . How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? (63–64)

Real delight, Lewis says, belongs to the realm of God. It humbles us, quiets our anxious desires for approval, and reminds us that our soul is real and to be accounted for. Reading personally means reading for something far better than applause. As we read personally, we follow the thread of what Lewis called “the secret signature” of our hearts (The Problem of Pain, 151). Our favorite books reveal something that God put in us. The passages we laugh or cry over, even when no one is watching, can be like soul-mirrors.

To enjoy something because we find it lovely points us in the opposite spiritual direction of performing for others. In the latter case, what we are actually enjoying is ourselves. In the age of social media, this is a gaping pitfall. It is so easy to post pictures of our “current reads” simply for the purpose of gaining admiration. In some cases, we have no desire or even intention of finishing the books in our photos. Lewis warns us against this temptation, and so does our Lord: “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44). Let’s not deaden the purifying effects of real delight by being addicts of human glory.

3. Read with generosity, not grievance.

Here’s a diagnostic question for all of us that read and (especially) review books: Do we practice the Golden Rule? Do we read others the way we would want to be read?

Imagine the following scenario. You are reading a book by a Christian writer who is somewhat outside your normal theological tribe. You come across a sentence that strikes you as odd. It’s not clearly false, but it’s not what you would have said, either. At this point, you have a choice: You can read with generosity, meaning you note the ambiguous wording but do not accuse the writer of saying something he is not. Or you can give the words their worst possible meaning, and perhaps even label the author a false teacher.

“The Bible is the book that gives every other good book its power.”

Which of these options reflects the biblical command to “be not wise in your own eyes” (Proverbs 3:7), to “[believe] all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7), and to not render a verdict hastily (Proverbs 25:8)? Christians read with generosity, not because we are too timid to call out error, but because we believe truth is precious enough to pursue with patience.

These biblical warnings should sober us against the temptation to read something solely for the purpose of disagreeing with it. There will be times and occasions when we must read something we know is wrong. But the polemical muscle does not need to be flexed often. Be wary of reading with grievance.

4. Read with wonder, not weariness.

I am discouraged when I find a “What are you reading?” interview with a prominent pastor or Christian leader, and the interviewee remarks that he doesn’t read fiction. Great literature is a treasure of wonder. The best stories seem to turn the light on in our own hearts; in heroes and villains we can see the range of human nature, and in journeys and transformations we can be reminded of how much we don’t know. I sometimes wonder how much we evangelicals read simply for the purpose of accumulating more data, rather than reading so that we can move a little bit closer to the image of Jesus.

The Preacher remarks, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). If reading has become wearisome to you, consider taking an inventory. Does your reading captivate you? Does it make you forget yourself? Does it open your eyes and soften your heart? Or is it just more information to absorb? Consider the metaphors and parables of God’s Word. You and I are created to wonder at God the poet.

5. Read for eternity, not for ephemera.

We live in a noisy world. There is no end to the novelty. And the vast majority of it is meaningless: thousands of tweets, articles, and even books that will be almost immediately obsolete, millions of hours of video and audio that will hardly make sense in a week. We don’t have a choice whether we will live and read in such a world. But we can choose how we live and read in it.

The books, stories, poems, and essays that will stay with us the longest, perhaps even for a lifetime, will be the ones that make eternity come alive in some way. A theological work illuminates just how much we can trust Christ. A classic novel makes virtue feel worth the suffering. A poem’s beauty hits on our hearts like sunlight on a starved leaf. An essay makes ultimate reality just a little bit clearer. These are hours of reading that we never truly leave; the words leave an imprint on us. These are treasures that can make the noise we often consume feel as fleeting as it is.

As I read the Bible, I’m continually amazed by how its freshness grows with each passing year. The Scriptures are more than our first reading priority each morning, or the only inerrant words we can read (though they are that). The Bible is the book that gives every other good book its power. It is the epicenter of beauty, the metanarrative of meaning — every story that reverberates in our hearts comes, ultimately, from God’s Story.

As you read — books, essays, poems, plays, and more besides — look for eternity. Look for the Bible’s residual presence. Look for the aroma of transcendent truth. And with gratitude to the one who is himself the Word made flesh, let this kind of reading do its good work in you.

Audio Transcript

Ask three people to explain what it means to be spiritual . . . and you’ll get four different answers. That’s a humorous way to state the problem. Definitions of spirituality are very squishy things. The term means something different to everyone. So, what is biblical spirituality? Can we settle on an objective definition of spirituality from the Bible?

That’s the question today from a young woman — and for her, it’s not a theoretical question at all. “Pastor John, my mother and I have differing views on biblical spirituality. So much so that she has said that my husband and I are not spiritual. I believe this is because she embraces spirituality as spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, interpreting dreams, and claiming healing. My husband and I have worked in the mission field, are heavily involved in church, love the Lord, and seek after him in all things. I don’t know what to say to this. Is it possible that we — my husband and I — are not spiritual? I feel that this is not the case as I see fruit of the Spirit in our lives. How would you respond to such a statement towards yourself? And more broadly, what does authentic Christian spirituality look like?”

Let’s start with a few comments about the use of language and the importance of definitions, and then we’ll move over to the biblical use of the term spiritual, which is especially interesting because, in the ESV, the word spiritual or spiritually occurs 29 times, and 27 of them are in the writings of the apostle Paul, and the other two are in Peter’s first letter. So, it isn’t a very widespread term, and we’re mainly dealing with Paul — we’re dealing with his understanding of it — when we talk about the meaning of spirituality or being spiritual in the New Testament.

Whose Spirituality?

So first, a few thoughts about the use of language. I wonder what our friend would feel or think if a New Age spiritualist who practices divination, fortune telling, necromancy, palm reading, and earth worship were to say to our mature Christian friend, “You’re not spiritual because you don’t pursue these spiritual practices like I do.”

“Paul’s most basic use of the term ‘spiritual’ is to refer to true Christians who have the Holy Spirit.”

Now, my guess is that our friend would not feel very threatened at all or seriously criticized because she knows that those practices are not at all what the Bible means by spiritual. In fact, just the opposite: the Bible opposes those practices. But the point is that the New Age spiritualist is spiritual by his own definition. So, there would be no point in arguing which of those is spiritual. If you don’t define your terms, it would go nowhere. The argument would go nowhere if you said, “Which one of us is spiritual?” because they don’t agree on what they mean by spiritual. They are using the word in drastically different ways.

So, when our friend says, “My mother and I have differing views on biblical spirituality,” she could mean, “My mother and I agree on the meaning of the word, but we disagree on whether my husband and I are living up to it.” Or she could mean that they seriously disagree on the biblical definition of spirituality, and so they can’t assess the other with the same criteria, and we just talk past each other.

Now, I’m pretty sure, from what she says, that our friend takes the latter view because she says she embraces spirituality as spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, interpreting dreams, claiming healing. So, the mother thinks that being spiritual in a biblical sense is exercising spiritual gifts, while our friend thinks being spiritual means something else.

Spirit-Indwelt People

Let’s go to Paul’s writings and see what the term actually means. Paul uses the word spiritual to refer to spiritual wisdom, spiritual blessings, spiritual songs, spiritual bodies, spiritual gifts, spiritual rock, spiritual food. Now, we’re going to leave all that aside. We’re only going to talk about spiritual people.

I think he uses the term in three ways, but they are all rooted in the same basic idea. And I think that basic idea is that a person is spiritual if, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he has experienced a new birth and is no longer defined by the flesh, which opposes God, but is defined by the Holy Spirit, who causes him to trust God and love God. So, a spiritual person is most fundamentally a supernaturally transformed person who has been transferred by the Spirit from the natural condition of unbelief to the Spirit-created condition of a new creature in Christ. They are spiritual in the sense that they were created by the Holy Spirit, and are indwelt and formed by the Holy Spirit.

So, you can see that if I’m right, Paul’s use of the term spiritual gets its meaning mainly from God’s Spirit, not my spirit. Paul doesn’t call others spiritual because their spirit is especially active or because they have an unusual preoccupation with mystical things, spiritual things.

Spiritual vs. Natural

Now, the most important text for seeing these things is 1 Corinthians 2:12–15. Let me read a couple of verses:

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:12–13)

Now, who are they — “those who are spiritual”? We’ve received the Spirit. We’re imparting things from the Spirit by words taught by the Spirit, but we can only do that to “those who are spiritual.” Who are they? That’s what Paul turns to. They’re the only ones to whom Paul can successfully transmit spiritual truths.

So, Paul explains why that is and who they are in verse 14, the next verse: “The natural person” — that’s the unregenerate, unsaved person, without the Holy Spirit, contrasted with the spiritual person — “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually [assessed]” (1 Corinthians 2:14). They are spiritually assessed — that is, in the sense that the indwelling Holy Spirit enables a person to assess them rightly. They’re not foolishness, but they’re true and beautiful.

He goes on, “The spiritual person” — now he’s contrasting that with the natural person, the unregenerate person — “[assesses] all things, but is himself [assessed] by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:15–16). That is, we have the Holy Spirit shaping the way our mind assesses things so that we don’t call wisdom “stupid” or “foolishness.” Instead, we assess things in the true light of Christ, but natural people can’t make that act. They can’t do that, because it’s not real to them. It’s just foolishness to them.

So, my conclusion from this passage is that Paul’s most basic use of the term spiritual is to refer to true Christians who have the Holy Spirit and therefore are no longer merely natural people but supernatural people, who have been born again by the Spirit, and whose minds are therefore able to see in the gospel the beauty of Christ and the wisdom of God. All true Christians are spiritual in that fundamental sense, and that’s his most basic sense.

Now, I think there are two other uses of the term in Paul, and both of them are adaptations of this meaning, not contradictions of it.

Mature in Christ

The first is that Paul can use the term spiritual for Christians who are more mature in their experience of this newness of their spirituality.

“Here’s the real test of being spiritual: it’s not gifts, but submission to the apostolic word.”

He writes in 1 Corinthians 3:1, “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people” — which is different from saying that they’re not spiritual people — “but . . . as infants in Christ.” Now, I don’t think that means — I used to think this — that they’re not spiritual in the first sense, but that they weren’t acting like it. Strife and jealousy were all over the church, and so Paul treats them as babies.

Here’s another example of this use of the more mature Christian as spiritual in Galatians 6:1: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” Now, he’s a Christian, and yet he’s calling these “spiritual” folks to go restore him. Those who are walking in the more mature influence of the Spirit and have the Spirit’s fruit — like meekness, which he refers to — you go restore that one back. That’s my second use of the word, a more mature experience of that spirituality.

Submissive to Scripture

The other use of the term spiritual is ironic in 1 Corinthians 14:37. It goes like this: “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.” So, ironically, there are those who have spiritual gifts — and they really do, like (I think) our friend’s mother is thinking — and they claim therefore to be spiritual. But Paul says, “Now here’s the real test. You people who are speaking in tongues and experiencing healings and exorcisms, here’s the real test of being spiritual: it’s not gifts, but submission to the apostolic word. Do you acknowledge that our word is from the Lord?”

So, my counsel to our friend who sent this question is that she will, with all humility, in the pursuit of all the fruit of the Holy Spirit, not be shamed by her mother’s misunderstanding. Don’t let her words shame you. She should realize that having spiritual gifts does not make a person spiritual. That was the problem at Corinth. It’s having the Holy Spirit that makes one spiritual — and being formed into the image of Christ by his fruit. That’s mature spirituality.

Imagine that you receive a word from a trustworthy prophet. It begins hopefully enough: “You will live long and die in peace, and your name will be remembered for centuries.” But then comes a turn: “A few generations after you die, devastation will visit your family and your church. Your descendants will lie in ruins.” How might you respond?

In an individualistic society like ours, whose generational vision has grown dim, many may indulge the same thought that passed through King Hezekiah’s heart when he received a similar prophecy. “Hear the word of the Lord,” the prophet Isaiah told the king. One day, the treasures of Israel will adorn the palace of Babylon — and some of your sons will serve, castrated, their captors’ king. Your throne, Hezekiah, will belong to your family no more. The prophecy placed the king on a thin threshold between a lost past and a mutilated future (2 Kings 20:16–18). For now, however, he was safe.

We might expect sackcloth and ashes, confession and earnest prayer — the same kind of desperation Hezekiah had showed before (2 Kings 19:14–19). Instead, we hear a sigh of relief: “Why not,” the king asks himself, “if there will be peace and security in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19). Dead men don’t feel pain. Why worry about an army marching over your grave?

The world today knows many such leaders, who live for their own passing lives with little care for the generations to come. Our families and churches, however, desperately need leaders who will live for the welfare of days they’ll never see.

Hezekiah Syndrome

No doubt, the individualistic air we breathe in the West reminds us of some important truths. God knit together every person uniquely (Psalm 139:13). We must respond, each one of us, to the preaching of the gospel (Romans 10:9). We will stand as individuals “before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

“Our families and churches desperately need leaders who will live for the welfare of days they’ll never see.”

Yet that same individualistic air can have a way of choking precious virtues, virtues that would have been assumed in biblical societies (despite the occasional Hezekiah). Biblical saints saw themselves as branches on a tree whose roots stretched farther than memory and whose limbs would keep growing long after they were gone. They walked, self-consciously, in the land between “our fathers” (Psalm 78:3) and “the children yet unborn” (Psalm 78:6). And at their best, they lived to pass on the godly legacy of their parents to descendants they would never meet (Psalm 78:5–7).

We, however, tutored by individualistic impulses, so often act like plants whose roots begin at our birth and whose fruit will die when we will. In both family and church, we struggle to live in light of a future we won’t personally experience.

In the family, many in our generation need to be convinced that kids, especially several kids, are worth the present cost. Under our breath, we ask questions prior generations rarely would have. Why give our twenties and thirties — decades of peak energy and strength — to rocking sleepless infants and pushing tricycles? Why build a family when we could build a career — or take on dependents when we could travel the continents? Generational legacies are buried, increasingly it seems, beneath today’s priorities.

In the church, too, we may subconsciously wonder if the benefits of patient, next-generation discipleship really outweigh the costs. Yes, we could train others to teach — but then we wouldn’t teach as much. Yes, we could find our Peter, James, and John and devote our days to discipling them — but only by devoting less time to our own discipleship. Yes, we could give others leadership and a platform — but only at the expense of our own.

Sometimes, this prizing of me today over them tomorrow happens innocently, with the best of intentions. Other times, the individualism around us becomes an excuse for the selfishness within us, and we forgo a Christlike legacy for the sake of present comfort, freedom, or power. Personally, I fear I have been shaped much by this Hezekiah spirit. I need another leader to follow.

Living for a Legacy

We need not scour the Scriptures to find men and women free from Hezekiah Syndrome. The Bible is filled with fathers and mothers, prophets and pastors who aimed to build a legacy that would outlive their little lives and names. Such leaders cared greatly about whether grass or thorns grew over their graves — about whether, long after they left the land of the living, the sun shone upon a world better off because of them.

Consider Abraham, for whom one hundred years well lived was not enough. He yearned for a son — and, beyond him, the promise of offspring greater than the stars, more numerous than the sand (Genesis 15:1–6). We call him father Abraham, and rightly so, for faith-filled fatherhood was his greatest gift to the world.

Consider Moses, who on the eve of his death implored God to “appoint a man over the congregation” so that the people “may not be as sheep that have no shepherd” (Numbers 27:16–17). The thought of a leaderless nation, vulnerable and lost, tore at the dying prophet’s heart.

Consider Rebekah and Ruth, Hannah and Elizabeth, mothers who ached and prayed for children to carry on the name of Israel. They gave their best years and their very bodies to bearing sons and daughters who would, in turn, make way for the one who would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).

Consider Paul, that childless apostle who nevertheless fathered many (1 Corinthians 4:15), and who could not separate his heavenly crown from the children God had given him (1 Thessalonians 2:11, 19–20). Under the shadow of martyrdom, he rejoiced at the thought of being poured out for their faith (Philippians 2:17).

Or consider Jesus, the God-man himself, whose soul was satisfied, even on the cross, by the prospect of “many . . . accounted righteous” (Isaiah 53:11). If ever there were a life worth saving, an influence worth protecting, or a platform worth preserving, it was his. Yet these he gladly laid down to bring “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10).

Such saints lived and died for “the children yet unborn” (Psalm 78:6). They could not meet those children yet; they would never embrace them in this present age. But they built legacies as men of old built cathedrals: looking beyond the boundaries of their life, they smiled at the beauty their grandchildren would enjoy.

Leaders Lost and Found

Perhaps we see clearly all we would lose by living for such a legacy — and we would indeed lose much. Pastors who devote themselves to appointing more elders lose much time and, if successful, a degree of personal power over the church. Spiritual fathers and mothers who disciple younger Christians lose energy they could devote to their own spiritual growth — or just to relaxing more. Physical fathers and mothers who add more children lose their free time precisely when they have the most strength to enjoy it; they may also lose career opportunities that will never return.

But oh, how much they gain in the losing. In the long term, of course, they gain something that will outlive them. They bear children, spiritual and physical, to bless the world. They plant fields that will feed generations.

Even in the short term, however, such leaders gain far more than they give up. Simply consider how living for a legacy brought the best out of biblical saints. We have Paul’s brilliant epistles only because this father in Christ burned for the welfare of his spiritual children. We read of Hannah’s fervency and faith only because she longed for a son who would build up her people. And two thousand years later, men and angels still stand — and will forever stand — in awe of Jesus, who taught and healed and died and rose for the children his Father had given him (Hebrews 2:13). The most beautiful life ever lived is the one he laid down for future generations.

“‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ — in part because we find ourselves in the giving.”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35) — in part because we find ourselves in the giving. So, though modern-day Hezekiahs may have short-term comfort on a short-term timeline, they do not have themselves. They are a ghost of who they could be. For God made women to have full wombs and tired arms; he made men to carry daughters on their backs and wrestle sons on the floor. And beyond the home, he made leaders to expend their best energy, to flex their strongest muscles, to take the beauty of their youth and the vigor of their best days and stack them as so many stones that raise a staircase for others.

Futures Dearer Than Our Own

If today we have any stability in life, and any maturity in Christ, we can likely trace these blessings to mothers and fathers, pastors and others who counted our futures dearer than their own. Personally, I can’t separate who I am today from a few key people — certainly my father and mother, and then, alongside them, a college-ministry leader who gave many hours to developing a once-insecure, inconspicuous young man.

As a pastor with a young family, he wasn’t searching for ways to fill his time, much less with teenagers and twentysomethings who could offer little to him personally. But fill his time with me he did. And slowly I grew.

We live far apart today, his massive investment in me no longer a direct benefit to his ministry. But the legacy of his leadership lives on in my family, my friendships, my church. When I left Colorado for Minnesota, I left far better for having known him.

Now as a father and pastor myself, his example walks with me, reminding me that we cannot stay here long. Our names will soon be forgotten, our little lives gone with the grass. But we can live now so that we leave a Christlike legacy, one that may bear fruit far beyond us, even into eternity.

Man is a creature who hardly knows himself. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Even as a Christian with a new heart, I continue to discover within myself new contradictions, fresh perplexities, strange paradoxes. Take, for example, the cohabitation of a desire for a sturdier faith in Jesus Christ, with a quiet and competing preference for a scrawny faith.

On the one hand, I grimace as I watch Jesus routinely chide the disciples for their “little faith” (Matthew 8:26). Lord, I am too much like them. Fix my eyes firmly on my King. Strong faith, even when unpossessed, is not undesired.

But then I discover an Achan in the camp, a Judas among the twelve with his hand in the moneybag. A skulking and smiling and sinister wish that sabotages progress in the faith. C.S. Lewis first warned me of his presence.

I’m not sure, after all, whether one of the causes of our weak faith is not a secret wish that our faith should not be very strong. Is there some reservation in our minds? Some fear of what it might be like if our religion became quite real? I hope not. God help us all, and forgive us. (Essay Collection & Other Short Stories, 137)

At first, it seemed absurd. Who wouldn’t want to move mountains? Who wouldn’t want to bludgeon unbelief? I tried to move on. I tried throwing my conscience a different bone. But it wouldn’t budge.

“Some fear of what it might be like if our religion became quite real” — that sentence drew the blood. Did I not want all of this to become more real? Was I afraid of what it might be like farther off from the shore? Are you?

Afraid of True Religion

What might Lewis mean by this dread of strong faith, of a religion too real and near?

He means that some of us suspect, deep down, that if we meet the real thing more often, if we galloped too forcefully toward eternal realities, they would unhorse us. And what would follow? If our faith were too solid, we might lose much in this world. We might become the oddities we wish to avoid. They might shackle us and carry us off we know not where, and pressure us to risk more than we would mind losing.

Our relationships would change. Our priorities would change. This world would start to fill with devils, with immortal souls, with warfare. Nature would kneel before supernature.

“The richness and depth of our world comes from the relationship between ordinary pleasures and transcendent beauty.”

God would grow. Death would stare. We might hear Satan laugh. Would the weight of it all crush our finitude? It could certainly stampede some dreams. If Christianity became entirely real, which of our Isaacs are safe? What sacrifice would be too great, or trial too burdensome, to endure for his glory? If the roots went all the way to the bottom, then my life really is not my own, is it?

Hell — how could we conceive of it? Heaven — how could we live for less? Gospel — how could we ever withhold it? Time — how could we ever waste it? Christ — how could he be less than all in all?

Such unbending realness, we can now begin to see, might secretly wish to be kept at bay. Jurassic Park is pleasant until the electric fences go out. We have done a fine job today creating our theme park and barriers where forces from the next world might be seen from time to time grazing safely on the other side of our passions and amusements. Yet, for all of that, we fail to realize that the electricity was never on.

High and Perilous

Strong faith knocks powerfully as an intrusive and demanding visitor. Is he not the great culprit in Hebrews 11, sending those saints forth to be swept off to otherwise unpleasant, inconvenient, and sometimes fatal adventures?

This faith is like pesky Gandalf to our hobbit holes. Austin Freeman comments,

Gandalf intercedes in the culture of the Shire because the hobbits had begun to forget their own stories of daring and danger and therefore their sense of the world’s greatness. They needed to renew their memory of the high and the perilous. The hobbits must be reminded of an element of danger in order to appreciate what they have. (Tolkien Dogmatics, 80)

Haven’t many of us lost much of what we once had? Haven’t we also grown stale, forgetting the greatness of the world — the greatness of this Story that God is writing around us? Too often, we have edited out the high and perilous, the epic and the eternal, the glorious and the numinous. Or at least we relocate dangers to chapters before and after our own page. Not in our doctrinal statements, perhaps, but in our daily sense of what is most ultimate, most urgent.

Freeman goes on to depict how the unpredictability and hazard of such faith actually becomes invaluable to our soul’s happiness.

The good things that make hobbit society valuable, such as freedom and peace and pleasure in ordinary life, require a greater and more dangerous world outside their borders in order that they not grow stale. The richness and depth of our world come from the relationship between the ordinary pleasures, such as food, drink, and family on the one hand, and the longing for transcendent beauty, quests, and noble sacrifice on the other hand. (80)

“Our secret wish for little faith, should we indulge it any longer, will only rob us in the end.”

Domesticity must dance with dragons. The richness and depth of our world comes from the relationship between ordinary pleasures and transcendent beauty. Reality, without consulting us, sings a duet: the ordinary with the extraordinary. This world lodges firmly in the shadow of the next. Yet, the transcendent is often gone — not from our Bibles or from our actual world — only drained from our bloodstream.

Befriend and Obey Reality

Weak faith contents itself to have it so. Weak faith minds the times and stands no taller than is necessary. Weak faith knows that a host of awkward conversations, probable persecutions, and unquenchable sorrows are restrained on the other side of the dam.

Yet without such a torrent, we live half-lives (if that). Again, “The richness and depth of our world come from the relationship between the ordinary pleasures, such as food, drink, and family on the one hand, and the longing for transcendent beauty, quests, and noble sacrifice on the other hand.” Reality will have her vengeance. Remove the spiritual, the beautiful, the sacrificial, and you flush all the wonder and meaning from the superbly ordinary.

But should we dress in the whole armor of God and war against spiritual powers, when we savor our food and glorify God as we drink, when we raise families and care for neighbors and serve a local church full of normal saints, when we sacrifice and suffer and wait and worship — bowed smilingly beneath the lordship and love of God our Father and our Savior Jesus Christ — we live, really live.

Our secret wish for little faith, should we indulge it any longer, will only rob us in the end. Reality, to the Christian, is a best friend to be fully embraced, a captain to be dutifully obeyed. The unseen is more real than we think. Christ is more worthy than makes us comfortable. Death is nearer, hell is hotter, heaven more heavenly, sin more sinister, the church more dear, the gospel more atomic, the Father more holy, compassionate, and just than little faith wants to imagine. The real thing is the only reality that is, the only reality that will be, and the only reality that Christians will ever truly wish to be.

In March 1557, a group of Protestant French tradesmen landed on an island off the coast of Brazil, coming to be a part of a new French colony that needed more people, especially skilled workers. Along with this company were two Protestant ministers, Pierre Richier and Guillaume Chartier, who had been invited to teach the other Europeans and to evangelize the native people. This landing marked the first Protestant missionary enterprise to the New World.

Before long, however, the Catholic governor of the colony exiled the Protestant preachers to the mainland, and then eventually he forced them to return to France. Thus, while this missionary effort to the Americas did not last long and saw little fruit, it was the first Protestant attempt to brave the great difficulties involved in bringing the gospel to the people in these new lands.

What sort of church and what kind of leaders were behind such a daring and dangerous undertaking? What was the soil from which this great, historic endeavor emerged? Contrary to some contemporary expectations, this missionary enterprise arose from the church in Geneva under the leadership of John Calvin.

Though this episode (and others like it) are well-known and discussed in academic circles, the general public commonly assumes, and missions textbooks confidently assert, that the Protestant Reformers lacked zeal or urgency for world missions. Some assume that the Reformers’ high view of God’s sovereignty undercut missions concern; others, more sympathetically, state that the press of survival and rebuilding the church kept them from being able to concentrate on missions. Yet the church in Geneva supplied the first Protestant missionaries to the New World.

The effort did not have much success. We cannot judge such work by the success we see, however, but by the willingness to obey. And this was dangerous obedience — traveling to an unknown world, all while risking health, stability, and even life in interaction with Catholic authorities, unknown diseases and animals, and potentially hostile natives. Still they went.

Joyful Cause

Some have sought to downplay this effort, suggesting it merely supported commercial activity or provided religious services for the French settlers. However, we have a firsthand account of the Genevan church’s actions in the personal journal of Jean de Léry, a member of the church in Geneva.

According to de Léry, the Genevan church was asked to provide preachers and other people “well-instructed in the Christian religion” so that they might teach the other Europeans and “bring savages to the knowledge of their salvation.”1 The missionary element of the endeavor is crystal clear. Furthermore, the response of the church to this request is striking. De Léry records, “Upon receiving these letters and hearing this news, the church of Geneva at once gave thanks to God for the extension of the reign of Jesus Christ in a country so distant and likewise so foreign and among a nation entirely without knowledge of the true God.”2 Not only was evangelistic outreach a part of the original plan, but it was also a prospect that brought great joy to the church!

During the mission, one of the missionaries sent a letter to Calvin. He described the difficulties of their evangelistic efforts, but said, “Since the Most High has given us this task, we expect this Edom to become a future possession of Christ.”3 Not only was this clearly a mission endeavor; the missionaries themselves persevered in a most difficult task buoyed by confidence in a sovereign God.

Churches on Mission

This account is not out of character for the churches of the Reformation. The churches in Wittenberg and Geneva trained pastors, and sent them out to preach the gospel all over Europe, crossing national borders and risking their lives. Geneva has been described as a vast mission hub: as refugees poured in from across Europe, they were trained and then sent back out to preach the gospel.

The Genevan church kept a Register of the Company of Pastors, a sort of book of minutes, which catalogs the sending of missionaries to various places. As early as 1553, there is mention of a pastor being sent to a group of embattled Protestants in France. By 1557, the same year Richier and Chartier arrived in Brazil, the Register shows that the sending of missionary pastors formed a regular part of the work of the Genevan church. By 1562, religious wars in France made it too dangerous to record these activities, but by then the Register had already recorded 88 missionaries by name sent out since 1557, and other records indicate that many more were sent in those later years, including more than 100 in one year alone.

This was no accidental missionary fervor; it grew in these churches because Martin Luther, Calvin, and others taught their people to pray for the salvation of the nations, gave them songs to sing about missions, and regularly exhorted them in sermons toward evangelism.

Kingdom Prayers and Songs

In his brief work written to teach his people how to pray following the Lord’s Prayer, Luther provides an example of how one might pray from each petition. In each of the first three petitions, he explicitly prays for the conversion of unbelievers.4 Luther’s exposition of the Lord’s Prayer in his Large Catechism also teaches that “your kingdom come” calls us to pray that the kingdom “may gain recognition and followers among other people and advance with power throughout the world.”5

Similarly, Calvin expounds Paul’s call to pray “for all people” (1 Timothy 2:1), exhorting his people to “call upon God and ask him to work toward the salvation of the whole world, and that we give ourselves to this work both night and day.”6 Indeed, throughout his series on 1 Timothy, preached in the year leading up to the mission to Brazil, Calvin regularly concluded the sermons with a prayer for the salvation of the nations.7

Luther’s hymns, which were a hallmark of his work and spread to other churches, also exhorted believers to take the gospel to the nations, and reflected on God’s desire for the “heathen” to come to faith.8

Laboring for Souls

Last, not only did these Reformers call for prayer for world mission, but they called for direct witness. Luther says, “One must always preach the gospel so that one may bring some more to become Christians.”9 Furthermore, “It would be insufferable for someone to associate with people and not reveal what is useful for the salvation of their souls.”10 Indeed, Luther says, “If the need were to arise, all of us should be ready to die in order to bring a soul to God.”11

Calvin taught, “If we have any kindness in us, seeing that we see men go to destruction until God has got them under his obedience: ought we not to be moved with pity to draw the silly souls out of hell and to bring them into the way of salvation?”12 He told pastors that God had made them ministers for the purpose of saving souls, and thus, God calls them to labor “mightily, and with greater zeal and earnestness” for the salvation of souls.13 Even when people reject the salvation offered to them, we continue to “devote” ourselves to this evangelistic work and “take pains” in calling people to faith so that they might “call as many to God as they can.” Indeed, “we must take pains to draw all the world to salvation.”14

In fact, Calvin strongly rebukes those who lack evangelistic concern:

So then let us mark first of all that all who care not whether they bring their neighbors to the way of salvation or not, and those who do not care to bring the poor unbelievers also, instead being willing to let them go to destruction, show plainly that they make no account of God’s honor. . . . And thus we see how cold we are and negligent to pray for those who have need and are this day in the way to death and damnation.15

It is no wonder that churches receiving this sort of instruction developed a heart for seeing the gospel go to the ends of the earth. Rather than disparaging these brothers and sisters who went before us, we should humbly look to them to learn from their zeal and perseverance.