Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. This week we’re talking about pastoral ministry. Can single men pastor — or must pastors be married?? That’s today. And then, how much should pastors make? That’s up next.

So, Pastor John, we know that many professing Christians around the world claim that church leaders must be single men who have taken a vow of clerical celibacy. We of course disagree with that. For Protestants like us, pastors are typically married men. So we face a question in the opposite direction — and it’s a question recently asked by two different listeners. First, Josiah. “Pastor John, thank you for sharing your insight with us week after week on this podcast. Do you believe a first requirement for eldership is that he have a wife and kids?” Then Josiah cites 1 Timothy 3:2–4 and Titus 1:6. And Blake, another listener, likewise asks if a single, non-married man is eligible to be a church elder. What would you say to Josiah and Blake?

Whether a single man is permitted biblically to be an elder or pastor boils down to whether two passages — one in 1 Timothy 3, the other in Titus 1 — mandate that elders must be married. If they do, that settles the matter: we obey. If they don’t, then we have to ask whether there are other passages or other pointers or principles that would suggest it’s permitted or wise or unwise to have pastors who are not married.

Here are those two most immediately relevant texts:

He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? (1 Timothy 3:4–5)

This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained in order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you — if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife . . . (Titus 1:5–6)

Assuming Marriage

A couple of observations are, I think, especially relevant. First, Paul does not say here or anywhere else that elders must be married. He could have said that very clearly. It would’ve been easy in Greek to say that. (It would’ve been easy, of course, in English to say that.)

“Paul does not say here or anywhere else that elders must be married. He could have said that very clearly.”

For example, Titus 1:7 says, “An overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach” (see also 1 Timothy 3:2). And the Greek dei — “must,” “has to be,” “is necessary” — makes it an explicit necessity. No questions. Paul could have said, “an overseer must be married,” but he didn’t say that. What he said was, first, the elder “must manage his household well.” And second, if he’s a husband of one wife, he can be considered. Neither of those statements amounts to an explicit mandate for marriage.

So, it appears that marriage was assumed, but that it was not explicitly commanded. And I expect that it was assumed because ongoing, lifelong singleness in cultures was so rare that it scarcely needed addressing. That’s the first observation.

Another observation is the assumption that the elder would not only normally be married, but that he would normally have children. Both passages assume that the elders have wives and have children. So, if we’re going to infer that marriage is required for the pastorate, on the same grounds, it seems to me, we would need to infer that a pastor have children, not just a wife.

So, if I’m right that in these texts there is a strong assumption that a man will be married with a family if he’s a pastor, and yet there’s no explicit command that he be married or have children, then my question becomes this: What other considerations in the New Testament might help us decide whether it’s wise to have a pastor who is not married — or to expect that he would be or require that he would be?

Exemplars of Singleness

Now, the first consideration we might look at is that neither Jesus nor Paul was married and yet fulfilled roles of leadership and teaching and care for the churches very much like a pastor. Nothing is ever said about Jesus being married or single. The topic of his own marriage never comes up. There is no wife in the story of the Gospels, and it would be a total fantasy — some people have spun out that fantasy — to claim that he was married.

Paul, on the other hand, tells us more than once that he was not married. For example, in 1 Corinthians 9:5, “Do we” — meaning Barnabas and he — “not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” In other words, they certainly do have the right, and yet there are practical reasons why marriage for Paul would have been unwise. He didn’t use his right. The call on his life was just constant movement — and a lot of it in jail, enduring almost constant suffering. Marriage would probably have been constantly dangerous and miserable for a wife.

Whatever the reason, he wasn’t, and he makes it explicit in 1 Corinthians 7:7–8: “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am.” It seems to me that the singleness of Jesus and the singleness of Paul imply that an unmarried man can have an exceptionally fruitful ministry and be an effective pastor.

Then add to this the amazing praise that Paul sings to the benefits of singleness. And here’s what he says (this is 1 Corinthians 7:32–35):

I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

Single and Married Pastors

We’re tempted to say, then, “Well, Paul, why don’t you just make singleness a requirement for the pastorate?” I mean, the church went off the rails at one point and did that.

“Sexual desire is intended ordinarily to be satisfied in marriage. And that goes for pastors too.”

And Paul would say, I think, in response to that question, first, that sexual desire is intended ordinarily to be satisfied in marriage. And that goes for pastors too. First Corinthians 7:1–5 are amazing verses. Second, while there are advantages to singleness in the pastorate, there are great advantages also to marriage in the pastorate, not only in the matter of sex, but also in the matter of firsthand knowledge about marriage and parenting and the stresses and joys of ordinary family life. All of that is a great benefit for pastors. And having a wife at your side — oh my goodness — is a great ministerial blessing, I testify. When Paul is singing the praises of singleness, he’s not singing them as though there were no corresponding praises for marriage, especially in the pastorate.

My conclusion is that the reason Paul assumed marriage for the pastoral role in 1 Timothy and Titus was that it was culturally normal and it was a great advantage in knowing how to manage a household and empathize with married people in the church. And that was the norm: most people were married. But also I conclude that marriage is not an absolute requirement for the eldership or pastorate, and that, along the lines of 1 Corinthians 7, there are advantages of being single in that role. So, if I were on a search committee for the next pastor of our church, I would assume we’re looking for a married man who has a family. But I would not rule out a gifted single man whose life and ministry had shown and borne real fruit.

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in . . . conduct. (1 Timothy 4:12)

My brother pastor, this tragic world has no idea how much you’re worth. But in the eyes of the risen Christ, you so matter. You carry weight with him, and you can carry weight with the people in your church. And this gravitas has nothing to do with your age.

If the ministry makes you feel inadequate, welcome to the ministry! Even the prophet Jeremiah felt that way. But the Lord told Jeremiah to stop his defeatist thoughts: “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak” (Jeremiah 1:7). And then God reached out and put his own words in Jeremiah’s mouth (Jeremiah 1:9). Why? Because what matters more than your mouth is whose words are in your mouth.

And, remember, your calling is to pastor, not only to preach. These two primary tasks are inseparable but distinguishable. Preaching declares gospel doctrine, and pastoring nurtures gospel culture. When the pastor’s message is good news, and his manner is gentle warmth, “church” can start feeling like an experience of Jesus himself. And it’s exemplary pastoral conduct, surrounding both preaching and pastoring, that leads people into those green pastures and beside those still waters.

You don’t have to be brilliant, but you must be exemplary. First Timothy 4:12 says so. And how could it be otherwise? We can think of gifted ministers whose shameful conduct has discredited them and grieved us all. The whole world, along with the entire Christian church, has every right to expect us to be surprisingly exemplary in this age of corruption. Brother, let’s stand tall with Christlike integrity, as true-hearted men of God. If we corrupt ourselves, we, like King David, will give “great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme” (2 Samuel 12:14 NKJV). So much is at stake right here: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in . . . conduct.”

Pastoring in ‘Little’ Moments

Conduct, in the original text, suggests your multifaceted lifestyle, your many moments on many fronts, your total way of life in all its variety. This word covers all your interactions with people, all aspects of your job performance, all occasions of family life and leisure. George Abbot-Smith’s Manual Greek Lexicon catches the sense with “a wheeling about” — that is, a turning from one moment to the next as each day unfolds.

The whole-life-ness of conduct reminds me of one way I’ve changed over the years. Back in college, all my friends were reading The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. So I took it up too. But I couldn’t stick with it. The story unfolded so slowly, with one subplot after another slowing the onward movement of the drama. I started thinking, “Get to the point!” In my impatience, I gave up. That was in the 1970s.

Then the summer before the first LOTR movie came out in 2001, I tried again. I wanted my own imagination to paint the pictures. And this time, I couldn’t put the books down. Why? Tolkien hadn’t changed. I had changed. I had come to realize, by my fifties, that my real life is just like Tolkien’s portrayal — one tiny subplot after another, but each one meaningful within the larger story. I now understand that all my tiny moments are building toward the final denouement promised by God. So, I get it. Many small moments are how our lives actually work. They are where our conduct is formed and displayed. They matter.

The Book of Common Prayer gets us praying that “among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.” Exactly. That’s the realism, and the hope, empowering exemplary pastoral conduct.

Your Life Can Persuade

Let’s admit it. In lots of moments, ministry can feel insignificant. But your little moments are not little. Each one fits meaningfully into your story, as told by the Lord Jesus. Every meeting, every conversation, every quiet minute of study — all of it constitutes your conduct, declares your character, and can inspire your congregation. So, think long-term, and be patient. If God isn’t rushing around in a hurry, why should you? Over time, your exemplary conduct, growing into a magnificent totality, is convincing. You will win the respect of good people.

“Over time, your exemplary conduct, growing into a magnificent totality, is convincing.”

Yes, sadly, some church people will never respect you. But most others will be reasonable and will admire your example. They will feel proud that you are their pastor. You will prove the wisdom of saintly old J.C. Ryle: “Your life is an argument that none can escape.”

Now let’s get practical. As in my last article on exemplary speech, let’s see how Titus 2:2 can help us: “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled.” The “older men” are the grown-ups in the room. Your conduct can make you one of those heroes right now. Whatever your age, you can help set the tone for everyone else.

SOBER-MINDED

The exemplary pastor’s conduct is calm. He strides forward with gentle confidence. It isn’t bravado. It is sober realism. You are, in fact, serving the One who has all authority in heaven and on earth. You have no right to be inflated with pride or crippled with fear. The Lord of the universe called you into the ministry. He has been preparing you all your life for the duties and challenges of this very day. You’re more ready than you feel. Dare to believe it. And go do the next right thing.

“The exemplary pastor’s conduct is calm. He strides forward with gentle confidence.”

You can be a mature father-figure in your church. And good fathers know what to do, what to say, as the occasion requires. Then the other family members feel reassured, safe, grateful. What a wonderful calling your Lord has given you! You don’t have to deserve it, but you do have to receive it. Your exemplary conduct proves to your people that “Papa’s home.”

DIGNIFIED

The exemplary pastor’s conduct is noble. The longer I live, the more I desire this in my own life. That title “Reverend” before your name calls for this very quality of dignity, nobility, honor. I have no respect for pompous grandiosity in a minister. But gravitas — I revere it, and I expect it.

Is there laughter in the ministry? Oh, yes! How lovely a sound is the hearty laughter of the saints! But infantile silliness, common in our declining culture, deserves no place among the blood-bought people of God. We worship here below in harmony with “angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven,” as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us. Please, brother, show your church, by your exemplary conduct, what that dignity can look like — even this Sunday.

SELF-CONTROLLED

The exemplary pastor’s conduct is steady. Maybe at times you notice some unruly emotions inside you, as I do inside me. That bad neighborhood between our two ears can be a crazy place to dwell in. Our dark thoughts and feelings can dominate us, even defeat us. But godly men fight back. They dare to live in Spirit-given self-control.

Why not go to a trusted friend at church to talk and pray through together what most unsettles you? No one grows in isolation, not even pastors. But all of us can walk in newness of life by going to a wise friend with this humble request: “Help me see myself.” Who wouldn’t benefit from that? Your vulnerability itself will be exemplary conduct. And you will grow in the steady self-mastery that adorns the gospel you preach.

Exemplary or Cool?

The great thing about being 73 and half-dead is that I’m not cool anymore. It’s freeing. I don’t have to project an idealized false Ray. I can get over myself and love others. And here is my plea to you, my brother pastor: Why not enter that freedom right now, at your younger age? You can be exemplary in your conduct, by God’s grace, at a level that surprises even you.

Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Billy Joel back in 1990. Here’s a snippet of what he said:

I need substance in my life. And the world needs substance. The world doesn’t need any more hip. Hip is dead. The world doesn’t need more cool, more clever. The world needs substantial things.

The world needs substantial pastors too. That’s what I believe. It’s what you believe. Okay then: set the believers an example in your conduct.

The curious man came at night, under the cloak of darkness.

By and large, the masses may have been missing the significance of Jesus’s miracles, but Nicodemus, a Pharisee and “ruler of the Jews,” was catching on. “No one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him,” he recognized. He was beginning to understand. These visible signs Jesus performed were designed to open ears to the words he spoke. “You are a teacher come from God” (John 3:2).

Now, the great teacher stunned him with a doctrine the learned Pharisee could have known from his own Hebrew Scriptures: “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Regeneration or new birth, we call it. Physical, human birth, “of water,” is not enough to see Jesus’s kingdom. You need spiritual birth, to be “born of the Spirit”:

unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:5–6)

Long before born-again became a popular adjective, Jesus called for new birth in this famous late-night encounter. Not many of us today will be as stumped as Nicodemus was that night, but we may still scratch our heads, especially those of us who call ourselves “Reformed” and (rightly) take so many of our theological cues from Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Romans and the Reformed Road

In broad strokes, Romans moves from human depravity (1:18–3:20), to the wonder of justification by faith alone (3:21–5:21), to the everyday experience of the Christian life and the lifelong process of sanctification by the Spirit (6:1–8:39). The famous “golden chain” of Romans 8:29–30 lays out the marvelous, unbroken sequence of God’s care for his chosen people from eternity past to eternity future:

those whom he foreknew he also predestined . . . . And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Foreknowledge, predestination, effectual calling, justification, and glorification — and we may pause to ask about sanctification. But in Nicodemus-like fashion, might we forget to even ask about regeneration?

As J.I. Packer wrote in 2009, “Regeneration, or new birth, meaning simply the new you through, with, in, and under Christ, is a largely neglected theme today.” That neglect, says D.A. Carson, may have been “owing in part to several decades of dispute over justification and how a person is set right with God.” Carson continues,

We have tended to neglect another component of conversion no less important. Conversion under the terms of the new covenant is more than a matter of position and status in Christ, though never less: it includes miraculous Spirit-given transformation, something immeasurably beyond mere human resolution. It is new birth; it makes us new creatures; it demonstrates that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. All the creedal orthodoxy in the world cannot replace it.

How then does regeneration relate to our often-rehearsed “order of salvation” (Latin ordo salutis), which lays out the precious array of saving graces that are ours in Christ? How do we who love the Reformed emphasis on justification (and sanctification) think about the essential grace of the new birth, with the balance and health it brings to the whole of our theology?

New Life in the Soul

First of all, we don’t blame Paul if regeneration occupies too small a place in our thinking. After all, we clearly find the concept of new, God-given spiritual life elsewhere in his letters.

In his greatly celebrated lines to the Ephesians, he moves from human depravity (2:1–3) to God himself taking the initiative to “ma[k]e us alive together with Christ” (2:4–5), which then issues in the faith (2:8) through which Christ’s people are saved. And memorably in 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul exclaims, literally, “If anyone is in Christ — new creation!” Paul also rehearses this new creation in us in Galatians 6:15 and in “the washing of regeneration” in Titus 3:5.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, James draws on new-birth imagery in saying of believers that God, of his own will, “brought us forth by the word of truth” (James 1:18). Peter too, echoing the accent on divine initiative, praises God the Father as the one who “has caused us to be born again” (1 Peter 1:3). Like James, Peter also mentions the eye-opening word, the gospel, through which God works: “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).

“We experience regeneration as we come to life, spiritually, and have faith in Jesus.”

This “new birth” — essential, as Jesus says, to seeing his kingdom — comes through the action of the Spirit, working with and through the gospel word. It is not self-wrought, or merely cerebral, or even temporary. And unlike foreknowledge and predestination, the new birth happens in us. We experience it as we come to life, spiritually, and have faith in Jesus. Regeneration is God’s initiative and decisive work, and yet we participate in it, as our once-dead spirit revives and we believe.

No Lapse in Time

Addressing the topic of regeneration as it relates to justification and sanctification, we learn to recognize various kinds of order in the order of salvation. Foreknowledge and predestination clearly occur prior to the application, in time, of God’s saving grace to his elect through faith. Here we might speak of temporal order in a way we would not in distinguishing among the bounty of graces later applied to the sinner through faith (justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification).

Fresh emphasis on regeneration can be instructive because the new birth, in particular, focuses on the reality of God’s initiative and work in giving new spiritual life to the soul, which issues immediately and instantaneously in faith. In other words, there is no time lapse between God’s regenerating work and our experience of faith. It’s like opening an eye. No time lapses between the lid parting and light streaming in.

Yet there is a logical order to salvation, simultaneous as the actions may be. Opening the eye “causes” the light to stream in. Anthony Hoekema calls this “causal priority”:

When a person receives new spiritual life, he or she immediately begins to believe. Perhaps the best way to put it is to affirm that regeneration has causal priority over the other aspects of the process of salvation: faith, repentance, sanctification, and the like. . . . It is to be understood that these aspects of the process of salvation occur not successively but simultaneously. Though regeneration has causal priority over the other aspects, it has no chronological priority. (Saved by Grace, 14, 17)

God’s Initiative

Hoekema’s observation accents the special place of regeneration as being the work of God that immediately brings about the faith in us through which the full treasury of Christ’s blessings comes to us.

“Naturally, we may have been able to believe, but morally, in our depravity, we were utterly unable.”

Regeneration serves an essential function because we are born in sin, physically alive but spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1, 5). Naturally, we may have been able to believe (no physical obstacles), but morally, in our depravity, we were utterly unable. In the new birth, God acts to make us alive (Ephesians 2:5); he gives life to the dead heart and calls into existence the saving faith that did not exist until his call. He acts in the new birth to enable (and assure) our acting in faith.

With this in view, 1 John 5:1 says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.” Father here is not the typical Greek word for father (patēr) but “the Begetter” (“the one who begot,” ton gennēsanta). Believers receive new spiritual life from God the Father who gives life through the gospel of God the Son, by the work of God the Spirit. And this new birth shifts our loves: first, for our Begetter himself, and then for all whom he has begotten. The heart of regeneration is a new heart that delights in our Father and his Son, and loves our brothers and sisters in him.

Our Awakening

With regeneration, then, we also recognize the special place of faith. God’s work in the new birth produces (again, with no time lapse) our experience of saving faith, and saving faith serves as the instrument of our receiving God’s bounty of grace in Christ through the Spirit.

This connection between regeneration and saving faith, as simultaneous cause and effect, contributes to an understanding of what saving faith is (and is not). In other words, the nature of new birth determines the nature of saving faith. According to John Piper, “The very nature of the new birth that causes the sight of the treasure of Christ determines the nature of the faith it creates — namely, a treasuring of the treasure of the glory of Christ.” Therefore, “A shift of loves is at the root of saving faith.” God causes us to be born again, and we participate in the new birth by receiving Christ with joy, not with apathy or indifference.

Such faith unites us to Christ and is the occasion for his bounty of benefits becoming ours both instantaneously and progressively, both reckoned immediately and realized over time. The treasury of graces — justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification, and more — is applied to us with both already and not-yet aspects, in various ways in the differing graces.

Jesus’s Honor

So, God’s initiative of regeneration issues in our saving faith and brings us into union with the Son, in whom we experience the already and eternal cascading of divine grace to his glory.

As we pull apart and trace these threads of salvation, Sinclair Ferguson cautions us that “the traditional ordo salutis runs the danger of displacing Christ from the central place in soteriology” (The Holy Spirit, 99). Each aspect of saving grace was not only secured by Christ, but comes to us only in living relationship with him. Each grace is first true of the God-man, and then communicated to us in union with him by faith.

Jesus is “the righteous” (1 John 2:1) in whom we are justified, and will be publicly vindicated. He is “the Holy One” (1 John 2:20; Revelation 3:7; 16:5) in whom we are holy in status and become holy in practice. He is the Beloved and uniquely begotten Son (John 1:14; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9), in whom we received adoption as sons and will come into greater fullness. And he is the glorious one in whom we receive degrees of glory now and have the promise of full glory to come. And so, says Ferguson, “We cannot think of, or enjoy, the blessings of the gospel either isolated from each other or separated from the Benefactor himself” (102).

It was Christ himself who told Nicodemus, and us, “You must be born again.” And when the Father acts, by the Spirit, through the gospel of his Son, to open the eyes of our hearts and delight in him, he is greatly magnified in the saving of sinners.

In July of 1741, a 37-year-old Jonathan Edwards grabbed a sermon already preached in Northampton and took it on the road to Enfield. There it was “attended with remarkable Impressions on many of the Hearers.”1 Edwards spoke of sinners in the hands of an angry God and grace to those in Christ in a message that would come to represent the First Great Awakening. “What are we,” Edwards asked, “that we should think to stand before him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?”

Thirty years later, the spirit of Edwards was alive and well — yet in a most unlikely place and through a most unlikely pen. In August of 1772, a hurricane, described as “one of the most dreadful . . . that memory or any records whatever can trace,”2 swept through the Caribbean island of St. Croix. The fury came at dusk and “raged very violently till ten o’clock.” Then followed the eye, “a sudden and unexpected interval, which lasted about an hour.” Finally came four more hours of “redoubled fury . . . till near three o’clock in the morning.”

A few days later, after hearing a Sunday sermon, “a Youth of [the] Island,”3 seventeen years old, composed a letter to his derelict father, who was living on another island. The youth wrote, “It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place. . . . In a word, misery, in all its most hideous shapes, spread over the whole face of the country.” But this rare teen, in Edwards-like fashion, saw more than natural causation: “That which, in a calm unruffled temper, we call a natural cause, seemed then like the correction of the Deity.”4

Reforming Influences

It was no accident that this youth, named Alexander Hamilton, would take up such a perspective on the hurricane. Earlier that year, a Princeton graduate and pastor named Hugh Knox (1733–1790) had arrived on the island, discovered the precocious orphan, and begun to serve as a spiritual father to him.

In the 1750s, Knox had been student and good friend of Aaron Burr Sr. (1716–1757), founder and second president of the college in Princeton, New Jersey. Burr had married Esther Edwards, Jonathan’s third child (of eleven), and Burr himself greatly admired Edwards. Knox admired Burr. Now the young Hamilton sat at the feet of Knox, on September 6, 1772, as he preached on the hurricane. Later that day, the young Hamilton, imbibing the Calvinist theology, sat to compose the now-famous letter to his father.

Hamilton’s Christian interests cooled as they were eclipsed by political ambition and zeal for his work.

Doubtless, the first time Hamilton would have heard the name “Aaron Burr” was from Knox, speaking about the father, rather than his son. Burr Sr. died in 1757, just a year after the birth of his son. (Edwards then became the third president at Princeton and would have raised his grandson, Aaron Jr., had Edwards not died of a botched smallpox inoculation in 1758.)

In the fall of 1772, Knox was so impressed with Hamilton’s hurricane letter that he steered it to the local paper (published October 3, 1772), and it became the occasion for raising funds to send this gifted “Youth of this Island” to the mainland, in hopes he would study, as Knox had, at the college in Princeton.

‘Adore Thy God’

What did the seventeen-year-old Hamilton write? The hurricane had thundered, he claimed, “Despise thyself and adore thy God.” Yet Hamilton, in his Christian faith, found refuge:

See thy wretched helpless state, and learn to know thyself. Learn to know thy best support. Despise thyself, and adore thy God. . . . What have I to dread? My staff can never be broken — in Omnipotence I trusted. . . . He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage — even him have I always loved and served. His precepts have I observed. His commandments have I obeyed — and his perfections have I adored. He will snatch me from ruin. He will exalt me to the fellowship of Angels and Seraphs, and to the fullness of never ending joys.

The young Hamilton then exhorts his readers, “Oh vain mortal! Check thy ill timed joy,” and he ends with this plea: “Oh Lord help. Jesus be merciful!”5

That same year, Hamilton wrote a Christian hymn, one that his future wife, Eliza, would come to prize and cling to during the half-century she outlived him. In the hymn, Hamilton confessed,

O Lamb of God! thrice gracious LordNow, now I feel how true thy word.6

Yet this early Hamilton is not the one we typically remember today, nor the one celebrated in the award-winning musical (which Lin-Manuel Miranda spent seven years writing, from 2008 until its debut on Broadway in 2015).

What Hamilton is perhaps most famous for is the circumstances of his death, in a so-called “affair of honor.” In the summer of 1804, Hamilton took a duel with Edwards’s grandson, Aaron Burr Jr., who was the sitting vice president of the United States. Strangely enough, citing Christian conviction, Hamilton “threw away his shot” by not firing at his opponent. Burr, however, took aim and struck his rival. Hamilton died 31 hours later on July 12, 1804.

Hamilton’s Four Stages

Remarkably, in 2004, Ron Chernow’s eight-hundred-page biography began the work of doing justice to Hamilton’s memory in the twenty-first century. More than a decade later, Miranda’s musical, inspired by the biography and with Chernow as historical consultant, sent Hamilton skyrocketing back into broader American awareness — and just in time to save his face on the ten-dollar bill.

Of our interest, Hamilton seems to have experienced a Christian conversion, under Reformed (and Edwardsean) teaching, when the Great Awakening came to the West Indies in the early 1770s. Yet from a Christian perspective, Hamilton’s story is complicated, to say the least.

In his late teens, he professed faith, wrote hymns and commentaries on the Bible, and daily knelt to pray. But in his youthful zeal to rise above his station and in his ascent to political prominence, he became a prodigal. None rose so fast and then fell so far as Hamilton. But when he was finally humbled, neither Chernow nor Miranda could ignore his “late-flowering religious interests.”7

In this complex life of Hamilton, Douglass Adair and Marvin Harvey, writing in 1955, identified “four distinct stages” in his spiritual development:

his early piety, from 1772–1777
a “fifteen-year period of complete religious indifference,” from 1777–1792
his “opportunistic religiosity,” from 1792 to 1800
his final season, from 1800 until his death in 1804, when he “began sincerely seeking God in this time of failure and suffering”8

Jesus told a parable in Luke 15 of a youth who left home for a far country, squandered his life in reckless living, and eventually realized the world could not satisfy. In time, the young man “came to himself” and returned home to his father (Luke 15:17).

Whether there was a celebration in heaven on July 12, 1804, for the final homecoming of Alexander Hamilton, I cannot tell you with certainty. But I want you to hear the rest of the story, so far as we can tell, as we weave together both Jesus’s parable of the prodigal with these four distinct stages in Hamilton’s spiritual development.

A challenge here is that Hamilton’s life will look very different to a political scientist and a Christian pastor. I’m a pastor. Without doing injustice to his life as a statesman, I want to draw out, with special emphasis, the often-muted story of Hamilton’s prodigal journey and late-flowering faith.9

1. His Early Piety (1772–1777)

The younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country. (Luke 15:13)

Hamilton was born in 1755 on the island of Nevis. Due to his mother’s previous marriage and alleged infidelity, his parents were not legally married. He had an older brother, and his father abandoned them when he was ten. Two years later, his mother died of yellow fever. Orphaned, Alexander and his brother went to live with a cousin, who soon thereafter committed suicide. At age fourteen, he went to work as a clerk for an importer-exporter on the island of St. Croix and excelled. In 1772, Knox arrived on St. Croix and took an interest in him.

After the publication of the hurricane letter, Hamilton came to New Jersey, hoping to enroll in Princeton. He proposed an abbreviated course of study to president John Witherspoon, who denied his request. (Recently a student named James Madison had completed a two-year fast-track at Princeton and worked himself into a nervous breakdown. Perhaps Witherspoon had Madison in mind when he declined Hamilton’s request.)

Undeterred, Hamilton took his proposal to King’s College in New York, where it was approved, and he began classes in the fall of 1773. As early as that summer, he made his first public speech in favor of the revolutionary cause. His college roommate, Robert Troup, remembered Hamilton’s “habit of praying upon his knees both night and morning” and that “he was a zealous believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.”10

However, Hamilton’s physical and social journey into the far country soon led to a spiritual pilgrimage — or better, to spiritual lethargy and distraction, as the revolutionary spirit was fomenting in New York and began to draw forcefully on his energies. However devout he may have been at arrival, his unusually able brain and pen were soon captured by the feverish energy of the day. Rather than to Christian jeremiads and hymns, his attention turned to the revolution.

Ashbel Green (1762–1848), who would later serve as the eighth president of Princeton, reflected on those prewar days in the British colonies: “The military spirit that pervaded the whole land was exceedingly unfriendly to vital piety, among all descriptions of the citizens.” And this was especially so at the colleges:

Military enthusiasm had seized the minds of the students, to such a degree that they could think of little else than warlike operations. By the time the cloud of war had passed over, the colleges were more enamored of Deism and the French Revolution’s Cult of the Supreme Being than of orthodox piety.11

Hamilton too, alongside his fellow collegiates, was swept up into what was trending, into the talk of the cultural moment. And he had manifest abilities — skilled with words, brave enough for battle, and a natural leader. His revolutionary success quickly pulled him into the heart of American cause and its politics from 1775 to 1800, perhaps surpassed only by George Washington in that quarter century.

His Christian interests, however, cooled as they were eclipsed by political ambition and zeal for his work as Washington’s aide-de-camp, then in establishing a law practice in New York, and climactically as the nation’s first secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795. Alongside Madison, this young Hamilton would prove to be one of the great intellects of the founding generation. And while being every bit Madison’s match in political thought (if not exceeding him), he far surpassed Madison, and the other leading founders, in economics.

2. Fifteen Years of Indifference (1777–1792)

There [in the far country] he squandered his property in reckless living. (Luke 15:13)

Adair and Harvey call this the “fifteen-year period of complete religious indifference,” when politically he “shot up like a skyrocket.”12 Hamilton’s wordsmithing and courage had propelled him to revolutionary leadership. In 1777, he was promoted to Washington’s side.

Now 22 years old, he would be Washington’s right-hand man during the revolution and, later, under the new constitution, the first secretary of the treasury from 1789 until 1795. Then he would essentially function as the prime minister and occupy the most powerful seat in the first executive administration. Hamilton’s long-standing relationship with Washington proved to be a stabilizing force, at least in public life. In hindsight, his most productive (and least self-destructive) work came when he was most proximate to Washington.

But it was not only Washington (whose guidance was political) who influenced him, but also Eliza, whose sway was gently but relentlessly spiritual. He married her in 1780. She was, even then, what we would call an “evangelical Christian” today, and she became only more so as she aged.

“As a woman of deep spirituality, Eliza believed firmly in [Christian] instruction for her [eight] children,”13 and it would prove to have effects on her husband as they raised them together, and particularly as his great humblings came later. She endured his wandering and, in the end, may have won him with her life and conduct (1 Peter 3:1).

Hamilton was there at the battle of Yorktown in 1781, leading a battalion and with distinction. After the war, his ascending career seemed nonstop. In 1782, he was appointed to Congress from New York, under the Articles of Confederation. Here he would see firsthand how weak and inadequate they were for a league of thirteen states.

In 1783, he resigned from Congress to establish a law practice in New York. In 1786, he wrote the letter calling delegates to a convention in Philadelphia for the summer of 1787. He attended this Constitutional Convention, and the following year he organized and edited The Federalist Papers, partnering with Madison and John Jay to persuade New Yorkers to ratify the new Constitution.

Under Hamilton’s lead in 1789–1795, the Treasury Department drove the executive branch and new government. He grew the department to more than five hundred employees, while the War Department had a dozen employees, and Jefferson’s State Department only six.

And yet it was in this rapid rise, in his shooting up like a rocket, that cracks began to show — in particular, in 1791, in the adultery that Chernow calls “one of history’s most mystifying cases of bad judgment.”14 It would be whispered in private rooms until 1797 and then proclaimed from rooftops. We’ll come back to this in the next section.15

3. His ‘Opportunistic Religiosity’ (1792–1800)

When he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. (Luke 15:14–16)

Washington began his second term in 1793. In January, France’s Louis XVI was executed. By June, the Committee of Public Safety came to power in Paris with its Reign of Terror. France became the unceasing controversy of Washington’s second term, driving party divisions deeper between Hamilton and Jefferson, who soon resigned.

With the furor over the French Revolution came fresh atheistic fears among many faithful Christians. Hamilton saw the pro-French Jeffersonians exposed and “attempted to enlist God in the Federalist party to buttress that party’s temporal power,” write Adair and Harvey.16

Unfortunately Hamilton’s blasphemous attempts to use God for his all-too-human ends were extremely successful with large numbers of the clergy. . . . Actually it is during these years when religious slogans were so often on his lips that Hamilton seems farther from God and from any understanding of his Son, Jesus Christ, than at any time in his whole career.17

Like Jefferson, Hamilton was eventually worn down by political libel and public slander. In debt, with a growing family at home, he decided to return to New York in 1795. In this season, his early forties, he would experience the beginning of his many humblings.

The Adams administration, beginning in 1797, would bring mounting frustrations — both for him and him for Adams. He began to make several terrible judgment calls. In October of 1799, Adams broke with his cabinet (and Hamilton) to send an envoy to France, and in the wake of that came what Chernow calls “a total loss of perspective by Hamilton, the nadir of his judgment.”18

The dominoes began to fall, and Hamilton with them. In December of 1799, Washington died, his surrogate father. By February 1800, it became clear that the Federalist party was turning from Hamilton to Adams. Then, by the end of April, Aaron Burr and his opposing coalition won control of New York. In a matter of months, Hamilton’s political power and influence crumbled.

To top it all off, in the election of 1800, his old cabinet rival Jefferson won the presidency — and with Burr as vice president. As Adair and Harvey write, “Perhaps never in all American political history has there been a fall from power so rapid, so complete, so final as Hamilton’s in the period from October 1799 to November 1800.”19

And all this just eighteen months after the papers got ahold of his six-year secret, the adultery of 1791. Hamilton, hoping to protect his financial reputation, published a painfully long and detailed pamphlet confessing to his marital infidelity. He plainly did not know when to stop. His finances may have been in order. His soul was not.

Back to the Squalor

From a Christian perspective, Hamilton’s adultery appears as his most glaring flaw, even more obviously and unqualifiedly than the duel. His adultery showed how far his heart had wandered — and reminds us of the delusion of power and success. We can indeed be most vulnerable when we feel strongest.

There once was a great king in Israel who, as a prelude to infidelity, remained in the city when others went to war (2 Samuel 11:1). So too Hamilton, at the height of his power in 1791 — and with so much work to do — stayed in Philadelphia while his family summered upstate.

That summer, a 23-year-old woman approached him, telling of an abusive husband and asking for help. Later, in the notorious Reynolds Pamphlet, his extended public confession in 1797, he would write that he came to her door with monetary assistance. “Some conversation ensued from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable.”20 This is the first of several 1790s instances about which Chernow, even as the cool-headed biographer (and measured admirer), appears stunned by Hamilton’s folly:

Such stellar success might have bred an intoxicating sense of invincibility. But his vigorous reign had also made him the enfant terrible of the early republic, and a substantial minority of the country was mobilized against him. This should have made him especially watchful of his reputation. Instead, in one of history’s most mystifying cases of bad judgment, he entered into a sordid affair with a married woman named Maria Reynolds that, if it did not blacken his name forever, certainly sullied it. From the lofty heights of statesmanship, Hamilton fell back into something reminiscent of the squalid world of his West Indian boyhood.21

Yet even with the Reynolds affair made public, devastating as it was, it was still another eighteen months before Hamilton began to utterly crumble.

4. His Final Season of Suffering and Seeking (1800–1804)

When he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.’” And he arose and came to his father. (Luke 15:17–20)

One great irony of Hamilton’s story, and caution for us today, is that when he was at his best politically, he was at his worst in relation to Christ. And yet as he was humbled, turning again to Jesus, he could have been at his worst politically.

More terrible judgments followed the Reynolds Pamphlet.22 Even as late as the spring of 1802, he wrote a letter to fellow Federalist James Bayard proposing what he called a “Christian Constitutional Society.” I suspect this to be a genuine, though terribly naive, expression of his renewed Christian faith. It may also be one last gasp of his 1790s opportunism.

When Hamilton was at his best politically, he was at his worst in relation to Christ.

To counter Jefferson’s French-friendly Democratic Societies, Hamilton proposed a new society that would exist to promote (1) the Christian religion and (2) the Constitution of the United States. He saw both under Jeffersonian threat, but his Federalist interests were clearly political, or at least politically expedient.

“By signing up God against Thomas Jefferson,” says Chernow, “Hamilton hoped to make a more potent political appeal. . . . Hamilton was not honoring religion but exploiting it for political ends.” However misguided the effort, Chernow can’t help but recognize, “It is striking how religion preoccupied Hamilton during his final years.”23

Quiet Uptown

In November of 1801, the most devastating domino fell: his eldest child, Philip, age nineteen, died in a duel, defending his father’s honor. Learning of the duel, Hamilton had advised his son to take the righteous course and throw away his shot, that is, shoot into the air. But his son’s opponent did not. This would prove to be Alexander’s greatest devastation. Soon he would write to a friend that Philip’s death was “beyond comparison the most afflicting of my life.”24

Yet by late 1801, Hamilton was plainly taking deep solace in Christianity and Philip’s profession of faith: “It was the will of heaven and [Philip] is now out of the reach of the seductions and calamities of a world full of folly, full of vice, full of danger, of least value in proportion as it is best known. I firmly trust also that he has safely reached the haven of eternal repose and felicity.”25

“While the sufferings and frustrations resulting from political failure started Hamilton’s religious conversion,” claim Adair and Harvey, it was this “terrible personal tragedy [that] crystalized the change.”26 “This plenitude of sorrow . . . accounts for a totally new note — the first echo in all his writings of ‘Thy will be done’ — that now appears in certain Hamilton letters. . . . The old Hamilton arrogance had disappeared.”27

Hamilton’s spiritual renewal in this last season is too pronounced to ignore, whether in a first-rate biography or on Broadway. His reawakening appears to have just preceded (and prepared him for) Philip’s death. Miranda partially captures it in the aftermath of his loss, in the culminating song “Quiet Uptown,” where Hamilton sings,

I take the children to church on Sunday,A sign of the cross at the door,And I pray.That never used to happen before.

What may be a “grace too powerful to name” on Broadway is precisely the name we in the church know as powerful. And we name the name: Jesus.

In July of 1804, on the night before his own deadly duel, he would write,

This letter, my very dear Eliza, will not be delivered to you unless I shall first have terminated my earthly career to begin, as I humbly hope from redeeming grace and divine mercy, a happy immortality. . . . The consolations of [Christianity], my beloved, can alone support you and these you have a right to enjoy. Fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted. With my last idea, I shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world. Adieu best of wives and best of women.28

And so we ask, Why the duel with Burr? Just three years prior, he had lost his firstborn to a duel. On multiple occasions, he publicly had expressed his own disavowal of dueling. How could he agree to this, and especially now as a professing Christian?

Instead of engaging in speculation, I’ll let Oliver Wolcott Jr., Hamilton’s successor as secretary of the treasury, express his sense of its senselessness. On the day of the duel, Wolcott wrote to his wife that

Gen’l Hamilton . . . reasoned himself into a belief, that though the custom [of dueling] was in the highest degree criminal, yet there were peculiar reasons which rendered it proper for him, to expose himself to Col. Burr in particular. This instance of the derangement of intellect of a great mind, on a single point, has often been noticed as one of the most common yet unaccountable frailties of human nature.29

This was, thought Wolcott, “the derangement of intellect of a great mind, on a single point.” Wolcott added at the end his letter, “Gen’l Hamilton has of late years expressed his conviction of the truths of the Christian Religion.”

However tragic and ill-conceived his decision to row across the river to the dueling grounds in New Jersey, that would be not the place of his death. Hamilton threw away his shot while Burr’s bullet struck him in the liver and lodged in his spine. Hamilton seemed dead onsite but revived on the open water while being rowed back to New York. He lived another 31 hours, until 2:00pm the following day.

Mercy Through the Redeemer

Hamilton’s professions of faith on his deathbed are by no means his only indications of Christian faith, but they are his clearest and most documented.

First, he called for Benjamin Moore, episcopal bishop of New York and president of Columbia (formerly King’s) College. He asked to receive the Lord’s Supper. Hamilton was not a church member, so Moore hesitated to administer the sacrament (he would return later and administer it). Moore asked him, “Do you sincerely repent of your sins past? Have you a lively faith in God’s mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of the death of Christ? And are you disposed to live in love and charity with all men?”30

According to Moore, Hamilton “lifted up his hands and said, ‘With the utmost sincerity of heart I can answer those questions in the affirmative — I have no ill will against Col. Burr. I met him with a fixed resolution to do him no harm. I forgive all that happened.’” Moore says that he “had no reason to doubt [Hamilton’s] sincerity.”31

Rich Grace, Only Refuge

A second minister also visited Hamilton on his deathbed — his old friend Rev. John M. Mason, pastor of the Scotch Presbyterian Church.32 Mason told Hamilton that he

had nothing to address him in his affliction, but that same gospel of the grace of God, which it is my office to preach to the most obscure and illiterate: that in the sight of God all men are on a level, as all men have sinned and come short of his glory [Romans 3:23]; and that they must apply to him for pardon and life, as sinners, whose only refuge is in his grace by righteousness through our Lord Jesus Christ [Romans 5:21].

Hamilton responded, “I perceive it to be so. I am a sinner: I look to his mercy.” Mason then turned his attention to

the infinite merit of the Redeemer, as the propitiation for sin, the sole ground of our acceptance with God; the sole channel of his favor to us; and cited the following passages of Scripture: There is no name given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus [Acts 4:12]. He is able to save them to the uttermost who come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them [Hebrews 7:25]. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin [1 John 1:7].

Mason reminded him that “the precious blood of Christ was as effectual and as necessary to wash away the transgression which had involved him in suffering, as any other transgression; and that he must there, and there alone, seek peace for his conscience. . . . He assented, with strong emotions, to these representations, and declared his abhorrence of the whole transaction.”33 Mason then

recurred to the topic of the divine compassions; the freedom of pardon in the Redeemer Jesus to perishing sinners. “That grace, my dear General, which brings salvation is rich, rich.”

“Yes,” interrupted [Hamilton], “it is rich grace.”

“And on that grace,” continued [Mason], “a sinner has the highest encouragement to repose his confidence, because it is tendered to him upon the surest foundation; the scripture testifying that ‘we have redemption through the blood of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace’ [Ephesians 1:7].”

At this point, Hamilton looked upward and said with emphasis, “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Mason’s narrative continues with more Scripture and further affirmations from Hamilton.

Finally, writes Mason,

As I was retiring, [Hamilton] lifted up his hands in the attitude of prayer, and said feebly, “God be merciful to — ” His voice sunk, so that I heard not the rest distinctly, but understood him to quote the words of the publican in the Gospel, and to end with “me a sinner.”34

Puritan Roots and Prayers

Clearly Hamilton’s late-life return to his early faith and his deathbed confessions raise questions. As Christians, many of us may feel both relief and some uneasiness at the whole scene. That Hamilton never joined a church is troubling. Not many thieves on the cross have God as their Father but not the church as their mother. That is sobering.35 Perhaps he was an exception.

And those of us who grieve his long, tragic journey into the far country of political success and pride want to redouble our resolve to live now for what matters eternally and to welcome God’s humbling hand if we realize ourselves to have strayed.

Lest Hamilton’s late-life Christian faith contribute to a distorted impression of the nation’s founding, we’re wise to concede that this, meager as it is, may be one of the clearer affirmations of evangelical faith among the inner circle of the founders. You will not find such in Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, or Madison. (One exception is John Jay.) This is not to make much of Hamilton’s reticent and late-flowering faith but to own how unevangelical was the nation’s founding.

Hamilton’s political career is a warning to those today who pine to be in the room “where it happens.” Hamilton was there. It did not satisfy. For him, it led to the eroding and near ruin of what mattered most. His life is a cautionary tale.

Hamilton’s succession of humblings and his late-flowering Christian faith show us a man who rose to the top and was not satisfied with what this world alone has on offer. Military achievement and fame, political influence and position, success as a lawyer, an adoring wife, and eight children — his heart remained restless until, through much of his own sin and folly, he fell headlong.

But in his great humblings, he did seem to “come to himself” and find rest in the Savior in whom he first professed faith in his youth. For years, his life looked to Christian eyes like the third soil, “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). But perhaps, as Hamilton wrote in his hurricane letter, his Lord did “snatch me from ruin.” In his final season, and particularly in his clear final confessions, he professed “tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

May we too not only depart, but live now with such a reliance — and observing Hamilton’s follies, be spared some of our own.

The late R.C. Sproul was fond of inverting a particular biblical passage in order to bring home a theological truth. For instance, in seeking to press upon his hearers the horrors of God’s wrath, Sproul would turn to the Aaronic blessing:

The Lord bless you and keep you;     the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26)

Sproul turns the blessing inside out, transforming it into a curse:

May the Lord curse you and abandon you.     May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace.May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever.

His point in doing so was to press home the reality of God’s judgment and the wonders of Christ’s cross, modifying the familiar words so that we marvel at God’s grace in sending Christ to bear the curse in our place. Years ago, inspired by Sproul’s example, I engaged in my own inversion, this time transforming the Bible’s most detailed description of human rebellion into a vision for the Godward life.

The Godless Life

In Romans 1:18–32, Paul paints a picture of the consequences of human idolatry and ingratitude on human life and culture — the wages of a godless life. God’s wrath is revealed against our ungodliness, by which we suppress the truth of his sovereignty, power, and nature. In refusing to honor and thank God, who gives us every good gift, our minds fall into vanity and our hearts are darkened. Our rebellious folly is manifested clearly in the dark exchange that we make — trading away the glory of the immortal God for created things.

As a result of this foundational rebellion and false worship, God gives us over to impurity, lies, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind. The result extends to every area of human life. The individual is corrupted in mind and heart, in thinking and willing. The effects of rebellion extend from the inner man to the outer man, from the soul to the body. Our sexuality is corrupted, as sinful desires reign and ungodly passions distort the relationships between men and women.

From there, our corporate life is affected. “They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1:29–31). Family, friends, and society are all twisted by our debased minds as loving fellowship and community are torn apart and reoriented by our shared rebellion.

The Godward Life

So then, if this is a horrifying picture of human rebellion and ungodliness, what might the opposite be? Could an inverted Romans 1 give us a renewed vision for the Godward life?

The pleasure of God is revealed from heaven upon all godliness and righteousness of men, who by their righteousness celebrate the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. For because they know God, they honor him as God and give thanks to him, and they become fruitful in their thinking, and their humble hearts are enlightened. Having become fools for Christ, they have thereby become wise, and are receiving the glory of the immortal God and seeing that glory reflected in mortal man, birds, animals, and creeping things.

Therefore, God restored them in the desires of their hearts for purity, to the honoring of their bodies among themselves, because they gladly received the truth about God instead of lies and worshiped and served the Creator, who is blessed forever, rather than the creature. Amen.

For this reason, God renews their desires and delights and passions. For the women glory in the masculinity of men, and the men likewise revel in the femininity of women, and husbands and wives are consumed with passion for each other, men and women honoring the marriage bed and receiving among themselves the due reward for their obedience.

And since they see fit to acknowledge God, God reorients their renewed minds to do what ought to be done. They are filled with all manner of righteousness, goodness, contentment, benevolence. They are full of gratitude for other people’s gifts, brotherly love, peace, truth-telling, magnanimity. They are edifiers, encouragers, lovers of God, courteous, meek, humble, inventors of good, obedient to parents, wise, steadfast, compassionate, merciful. Because they know God’s decree that those who practice such things will receive eternal life, they not only do them but give hearty approval to those who practice them.

By turning the chapter on its head, we discover a fundamentally different vision for human life — one that begins, not with God’s wrath, but with his pleasure.

Going Godward Together

As we together turn our lives, ambitions, and worship Godward, we celebrate the truth, rather than suppress it. God’s revelation in creation and conscience and the Scriptures is the same, but now it leads us to heartfelt worship and gratitude to God through Christ. Such worship includes renewed and fruitful minds and humble and enlightened hearts, as we wisely and gladly receive the glory of God in and through the things that he has made.

Worship and thanksgiving spill forth from our souls to our bodies, as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). This worship and gratitude reorient our sexual lives so that our renewed desires lead us into marriages, families, and fruitfulness. Rather than a war between the sexes, in which we despise, reject, and scorn each other, men marvel at the glory of women, and women admire and rejoice in the strength of men, as our families live beneath the blessing of God.

And then our reordered desires spill over the banks of our families and flood every aspect of our social lives, forming communities and cultures united by deep love for God and others. God’s law is our delight. Evil gives way to goodness, covetousness to contentment, and malice to benevolence. We cast off fellowship-killing envy and instead give thanks to God for his blessings to others. Strife ceases and peace reigns. We put off malicious lies and instead speak the truth with magnanimous hearts. Instead of using words to tear down and destroy, we build up and encourage. Insolent pride turns to meekness and humility. By God’s pleasure and grace, “foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless” becomes “wise, steadfast, compassionate, and merciful.”

This is the way of life that God has set before us — the Godward life — and it was not without great cost. God himself, in the person of his Son, took our flesh and dwelled among us, and gave himself for us, to turn the curse inside out and make it a blessing. And he plants this seed in every regenerate heart through the new birth, as we see and savor the goodness and grace of Christ. And as he pours out his grace upon us, this glorious vision multiplies in churches and homes and communities around the world, for his glory and our joy.

Baptists were birthed in the matrix of Puritanism, that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century movement of reform and renewal. The genesis of Puritanism between the 1560s and the 1580s was deeply intertwined with questions of worship and polity. In fact, Puritanism, in its various ecclesial manifestations, was confident that there was a blueprint for polity and worship in the New Testament. As we will see, these concerns were bequeathed to their Baptist offspring.

‘Apostolic Primitive Purity’

Baptists began their existence in the first half of the seventeenth century — the General (Arminian) Baptists emerging in the 1610s and the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists appearing some 25 years later — with a passion for going back to the apostolic model that they believed was taught in the Scriptures.

One of the major architects of the Particular Baptist cause, William Kiffen (1616–1701), explained in 1681 why he became a Baptist in the late 1630s/early 1640s:

[I] concluded that the safest way [for me spiritually] was to follow the footsteps of the flock (namely that order laid down by Christ and his Apostles, and practised by the primitive Christians in their times) which I found to be that after conversion they were baptised, added to the church, and continued in the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer; according to which I thought myself bound to be conformable.1

In other words, Kiffen became a Baptist because he was convinced that believer’s baptism and congregational church governance were indisputably part of the blueprint of New Testament polity.

Ten years later, Hercules Collins (d. 1702), a key Baptist leader in London, made the exact same point in a polemical piece on baptism when he stated that his intent was “to display this sacrament in its Apostolic primitive purity, free from the adulterations of men.”2 In fact, he asserted, it would violate his conscience were he to baptize an infant.3

The Believer’s ‘Great Pattern’

Given the uniqueness of believer’s baptism on the ecclesial scene of Stuart England — of the various church groups, only the Baptists restricted baptism to believers — it is not surprising that they had to defend the biblical legitimacy of their position time and again in this era. One scholar reckons the number of tracts and treatises written on this subject during the seventeenth century to be more than a hundred.4

“In being baptized as believers, Christians are following the example of Christ, their ‘great pattern.’”

One of the most popular of these tracts was John Norcott’s (d. 1676) Baptism Discovered Plainly & Faithfully, According to the Word of God (1672). In the relatively small compass of 56 pages, Norcott’s tract sets forth the standard seventeenth-century Baptist positions on the proper subjects of baptism (believers), the correct mode (immersion), and the meaning of baptism (primarily identification with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection).5 Among his arguments in favor of believer’s baptism is his emphasis that in being baptized as believers, Christians are following the example of Christ, their “great pattern.”6

Hercules Collins maintained the same. He argued that “Christ was baptized about thirty years of age, as our example.”7 And at the close of the Stuart era, the Seventh-Day Baptist leader Joseph Stennett I (1663–1713) made the same argument in the following extract from one of his baptismal hymns:

Lord, thy own precept we obey,     In thy own footsteps tread,We die, are bury’d, rise with Thee     From regions of the dead.8

For Baptists, Christ’s baptism was the pattern that the believer, in being baptized, was following in obedience.

‘Forced Worship Stinks’

Believer’s baptism also became tied to religious liberty. In infant baptism, the child had no choice over what was transpiring. Some saw this as a symbol of an oppressive state church. Thus, its counterpart, the baptism of believers, became a symbol of religious freedom.

“The baptism of believers became a symbol of religious freedom.”

Consider the testimony of Roger Williams (1603/4–83), who became a Puritan during his studies for the Anglican ministry at Cambridge and who, in 1630, sailed to Massachusetts. During the long voyage, Williams had time to do an intensive study of New Testament church polity and its relationship to governing authorities. He came to the conviction that the magistrate may not punish any sort of breach of the first table of the Ten Commandments, such as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, false worship, and blasphemy. Moreover, he was certain that every individual should be free to follow his own convictions in religious matters, for, in his words, “forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God.”9

During the 1630s, Williams came into conflict with the Massachusetts authorities regarding his perspective on religious liberty. Within a couple of years, Williams and some like-minded friends were driven out of Massachusetts and founded the colony of Rhode Island. And though there is no indication that their disagreement with the Massachusetts authorities concerned believer’s baptism, they had adopted Baptist views, and the church they founded in Rhode Island became First Baptist Church in America. Believer’s baptism thus became tied to affirming religious liberty.

Recovering a Lost Pattern

Becoming Baptist in the seventeenth century was thus a radical act politically. Not that those who did become Baptist would necessarily have thought of the act primarily in those terms. For them, it was a step of obedience to Christ and a way of recovering a lost pattern of discipleship. Over the next century, Baptist commitment to this ordinance in its original design continued to distinguish the Baptists from other evangelical bodies in the British Isles. In fact, it was not until the twentieth century that one finds other Christian communities embracing the baptism of believers by immersion.

Those who underwent this rite in the decades following the era addressed in this small essay displayed a willingness to be marginalized in British society. In fact, pick up most recent studies of eighteenth-century British society, and there is nary a mention of the Baptists. Such studies convey the impression that the existence of this Christian community was little more than a blip on the radar of eighteenth-century history.

As the biblical record of divine activity in antiquity bears witness, however, such has often been the case. The God of our Baptist forebears delights in using those considered small and insignificant by the intellectual elites and in employing means, like the immersion of believers, regarded with utter disdain by the surrounding culture.

What is Look at the Book?

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

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to June. It’s June 1, a Thursday — our first Thursday episode in a long time, but now part of our new routine here on the podcast, at least for the season ahead. You can now expect APJ episodes on Mondays and on Thursdays. No more sermon-clip Wednesdays. John Piper’s sermons are now being curated in a new podcast from Desiring God, called Light + Truth. So if you want your five-days-a-week fill of John Piper sermons — old and new — subscribe to our new podcast, Light + Truth. I’m sure many of you already have.

But on this Thursday episode, we’re back in the studio with Pastor John to field a question from Dustin in Indianapolis, Indiana. He writes this: “Pastor John, hello! In light of 1 Timothy 2:1–4, how are we to pray for unrighteous leaders? How about presidents and other politicians? How do you do it? And what specifically do you pray for?”

Let’s read the text that Dustin is referring to so that we can be specific.

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1–4)

So, Paul is calling for Christians to pray for all people. We focus on the kings, but it says “all people.” “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people” — and then the kings and all those in high positions are a subset of “all people.” They are mentioned explicitly, I think, because they are especially relevant for the purpose of the prayer mentioned in the next clause — namely, that we may lead a life that’s “peaceful and quiet . . . godly and dignified in every way.”

So, I take the “all people” to mean that wherever we look in the world and see people who might in some way make decisions that have a bearing on the circumstances in which Christians live, we should give thanks — underline “thanksgivings . . . for all people” — for whatever proper role they fill. And we should ask God to incline their thoughts and incline their wills toward those decisions which carve out a space of justice and peace and freedom that allows Christians and others to live out our faith without physical resistance and without tumults and lawlessness and mob rule and war. That would include using their civil powers to restrain different forms of injustices.

Two Prayer Levels

So, there are two levels at which we pray for people in high positions. One is that they be saved. And Paul said in Romans 10:1, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” He was referring to his Jewish kinsmen, whatever their rank — whether they’re a high priest or a synagogue ruler or just an ordinary Jewish person. He’s praying, “God, save my kinsman.”

So that’s what we do for all people who come into our mind. We ask God to save them, to show them the truth and beauty of Christ and to incline their hearts to believe and embrace Christ as their Savior and Lord and treasure. Our hope as we pray this is that they will then, if they have any kind of authority at all, see more clearly which decisions that they have to make are just and peaceable and freedom-loving, so that some measure of freedom and justice and peace can be established, so we can go about our lives without tumult or attack. That’s one level: salvation.

“The way the state keeps the peace and the way Christ spreads his saving rule are radically different.”

Even if the first prayer is not answered right away — namely, for their salvation — we keep on praying for them. Paul does not say to pray only for Christian leaders or only that leaders become Christian. In fact, it seems to me that Paul assumes in this context that most of the leaders Timothy would be praying for are not Christians. They’re mainly Roman officials at various levels: emperor, governors, military leaders, town justices, as well as some Jewish synagogue leaders and so on. They’re virtually all unbelievers; that’s what he’s mainly referring to. And the way we pray for unbelievers, besides praying for their conversion, is at the second level I’m talking about — namely, the level of providence. At least, that’s one way to describe it.

We know from Scripture that “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). Now, that’s true of all kings and rulers, whether they’re godly or not. So, we pray that God, in his all-governing providence over unbelievers and believers, will incline the thoughts and the wills of non-Christian rulers to make decisions, even within their limited framework of right and wrong, that are just and freedom-producing and peace-producing, so that those things that would enable Christians to proceed with their ordinary lives would hold sway.

Peace, Not Power

I think the way Paul calls for prayer for leaders contains a warning for us of how not to think about the role of rulers in relation to the Christian faith. In spite of what I said about praying for their conversion (which is what we do for all people), that’s not what Paul focuses on in this text. Paul is writing in a situation in which civil authorities are virtually all non-Christian. They may be ignorant of the Christian faith; they may be neutral; they may be hostile.

So, Paul’s foremost thought is not that these prayers are prayers for Christian advocacy. I think this is crucial. He’s not telling us to pray that civil authorities would become a conscious weapon of explicitly Christian promotion of the faith. He’s thinking about pagan rulers who remain pagan but still are influenced by the providence of God to bring about, in their limited godless framework, some measure of justice and peace and freedom. Christians benefit from this as others do, but this providence of God is not an example of Christians trying to turn state power into an explicit promoter of Christ’s spiritual kingdom.

“We don’t pray as if the kingdom of God, the saving reign of Christ, is of this world.”

Now, the reason I mentioned that warning is because Jesus said to Pilate at his trial, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36). In other words, Jesus was eager that Christians not look to civil authorities for the establishment of his kingdom on earth. The way the state keeps the peace and the way Christ spreads his saving rule are radically different.

So, we don’t pray that the state become an arm of the church. We don’t pray as if the kingdom of God, the saving reign of Christ, is of this world, or that it would be advanced through an explicitly Christian use of the sword. Rather, we pray that God would have mercy on us and on the world — which he aims for us to evangelize, in this text — and would cause the hearts of presidents and governors and mayors and legislators to make decisions that bring about justice and peace and freedom so that we can go about our lives of worship and godliness and love and evangelism and world missions.

I imagine the short paragraph from Jeremiah Burroughs landed like it did that morning, in part, because my 2-year-old had just thrown an entire bowl of cereal on the floor — again. An exceedingly small affliction, to be sure, but not an exceedingly small mess (or an exceedingly rare one, for that matter).

Unbeknownst to me, the milky Cheerios strewn across my kitchen floor prepared the way for a life-changing illustration. Hours later, I read,

It is a saying of Luther: “The sea of God’s mercies should swallow up all our particular afflictions.” Name any affliction that is upon you: there is a sea of mercy to swallow it up. If you pour a pailful of water on the floor of your house, it makes a great show, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, afflictions considered in themselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of God’s mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison. (209)

“If you have God in your affliction, your burden is but a bucket in the ocean.”

Name any affliction that is upon you — chronic pain or sudden illness, persistent relational tension, the thorns and thistles of your workplace, a tortuous inability to fall (or stay) asleep, the loss of someone you love — name any affliction that is upon you, and there’s a sea of mercy to swallow it up. If you have God in your affliction, your burden is but a bucket in the ocean.

Buckets of Affliction

Now, to say that a burden is but a bucket (or “nothing in comparison”) is not to say that it is actually nothing. To suggest so would gut Burroughs’ scene of its power and belittle the immense mercy of God. No, as we all know, even a pailful of water can be truly disorienting. And life among our storms often makes heavy buckets feel like ponds, or rivers, or even oceans.

Few have carried suffering better than the apostle Paul, and yet hear him describe his “bucket” in a particular season:

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. (2 Corinthians 1:8–9)

Notice, receiving affliction well does not mean downplaying affliction. Paul despaired of life itself — and he doesn’t apologize for feeling (or speaking) that way. The bucket of water felt like a death sentence. And he wanted the others to know his pain was that intense, that bitter, that bleak (“We do not want you to be unaware, brothers . . .”).

“Receiving affliction well does not mean downplaying affliction.”

No, faith doesn’t downplay affliction, but it does place our sometimes overwhelming affliction next to the always overwhelming mercy of God in Christ.

Oceans of Mercy

The power of Burroughs’ imagery, then, doesn’t come from diminishing our suffering or distracting us from it, but from setting our suffering in proper proportion to reality. Does anything we experience distort ultimate, spiritual reality more than suffering does? If we who are in Christ could see everything as it really is, our affliction — any affliction — would look smaller than it feels, wouldn’t it? In many cases, a lot smaller.

As we’ve seen, Paul felt his pain acutely, and he didn’t ignore it or shy away from it or even keep it to himself. But he also wouldn’t let it blind him to the endless waves of mercy washing over him. Just a few verses earlier, with affliction crashing around him, he can still say,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction. (2 Corinthians 1:3–4)

In all our affliction, his mercy is more. Through eyes filled with tears, he can still see the sea. He knows that nothing — not beatings, not imprisonments, not riots, not sleepless nights, not hunger — nothing can separate him from the love of Christ. And so he always has more comfort than sorrow. Even while he has real, painful reasons to despair, he has even more reasons to bless God.

Because the apostle Paul stood along the same shores Luther and Burroughs later found, he could say of great, unwanted, unbearable suffering, “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Our buckets are shallow and brief beside the unseen oceans awaiting us. Everything we ever lost and endured will be swallowed up by “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).

Joy Hiding in Buckets

When we lay our pails of affliction beside the sea of God’s mercy, we can begin to make sense, can’t we, of this strange marriage in Scripture between suffering and joy (see Romans 5:3; Colossians 1:24; 1 Thessalonians 1:6). Again and again, we see saints not only finding the strength to bear and endure suffering, but actually learning to rejoice, even while the floors are still soaking wet.

Paul, for instance, can go as far as saying, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” (2 Corinthians 7:4). In all our affliction — not before or after or even beneath. And not a slow, weak drip of joy, but overflowing joy. This kind of joy perseveres in suffering, and even sometimes grows — like red and yellow and deep purple tulips in beds of snow. How could joy thrive out in the bitter cold? Because, in the right hands, unwanted buckets remind us to look beyond to the ocean.

A chapter later, Paul observes the same marvel in the church at Macedonia. Notice, again, how surprising joy finds its way into the fires of suffering: “In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part” (2 Corinthians 8:2). Joy didn’t wither in the throes of adversity and poverty, but amazingly swelled and overflowed. Their buckets were many and too heavy to carry, but they were also thimbles lost in far greater waters.

And the same miracle happens among the Hebrews: “You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property . . .” (Hebrews 10:34). We might understand them accepting what happened here, but joyfully accepting? How does someone rejoice while they suffer this kind of evil? Finish the verse: “ . . . since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Since they had set their buckets beside the wider, deeper seas of God’s mercies. How much can we really lose? How much can anyone really take from us?

Your Feet in the Sand

Few of us need help seeing our buckets of trouble. We regularly trip and stumble over them and then clean up the messes. The buckets may be bigger or smaller, newer and older, fuller or lighter, but we all have them.

We need help, however, seeing the massive and wild seas beyond our buckets. We’re far more acquainted with our light and momentary afflictions than we are with all that God has worked and promised to those who love him. We’re experts in our miseries and infants in his mercies. And we wonder why our life often feels like one big, messy bucket after another.

The good news is that, if we’re in Christ, we already live on oceanfront property. Many of us, however, need to get out and feel the sand more. We spend too much time cleaning up messes in rooms without windows — all while the shore’s just a few feet away. But we need to see the water every day — to hear the roar of the waves, to smell the freshness of the air, to taste of the ocean, to search and search for where it ends.

So what habits help you sense and wonder at the mercy of God in Christ? How often do you lay down your buckets and let your feet feel the sand? What relationships help you consistently wade out further into his word and his work? Where does the wider lens of spiritual reality come into clearer focus?

If we’ll lift up our eyes, his mercy will swallow any sorrow.

With five children between the ages of 19 and 8, my wife, Julia, and I are nearly two decades into our journey as parents. When you add two dogs, two cats, and an “Alexa” to the mix, the kitchen often feels like feeding time at a zoo, in the middle of a nightclub. Yet beneath the busy and often chaotic place we call home, Julia and I have experienced and developed a current of underlying peace.

Years ago, we came to acknowledge that while it’s right and wise to do what we can to position our children for future faithfulness, who they become isn’t ultimately in our control. We’re responsible for the home environment they grow up in, not who they turn out to be as grown-ups. We’ve found great peace as parents by focusing on the current callings God has given us rather than trying to grasp unguaranteed outcomes.

Though it’s been nearly fifteen years, I can distinctly remember how this perspective shift altered the way we talked about our home life. Our conversations quickly moved away from what our children were not doing (which is what we used to focus on) toward the many things that we, as the parents, could be doing. It may sound silly, but our parenting discussions finally began to be centered more on the parents!

In addition to changing our conversations, this new outlook resulted in significant shifts in the way we parented. After doing an honest evaluation of our home environment, we clearly saw we had work to do. We gathered scriptures that spoke to either parenting or family, and then we landed on Proverbs 22:6 as our starting point:

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Three Subtle, Significant Shifts

While the verse was familiar to us, the reality was more foreign. In fact, if the verse were translated like we parented, it would have said, “Tell up a child in the way he shouldn’t go, and tomorrow he will obey.” If that sounds familiar to you, I have good news: there’s a better way. The internal peace we experience now has been directly connected to the following three shifts in our parenting:

train up, not tell up
should go, not shouldn’t go
old, not young

It’s worth mentioning that while there’s some ambiguity in the original Hebrew, these three shifts aren’t limited to this text. Parents should feel free to embrace the call to train up our children in the way they should go, with a long-term view, because these are established biblical themes that each have wide support beyond this passage. We happen to love Proverbs 22:6 (at least as it’s worded in the ESV) because it beautifully and concisely captures these three wise shifts.

Train, Not Tell

Our first parenting shift was to embrace our role as trainers, not merely tellers. Our tell-up mindset was clearly seen in common refrains like, “How many times have I told you . . .” or “Don’t make me have to tell you again.”

“Our first parenting shift was to embrace our role as trainers, not merely tellers.”

For the record, it’s true that we had told them the same things repeatedly. What changed was the way we responded in these moments. As tellers, we used to get irritated at their lack of listening, but as trainers, we learned to push through and seek creative ways to stimulate their minds and hearts. We found that most (not all, but definitely most) of what we were quick to label as disobedience or indifference was greatly affected by a little more effort from the instructors.

As Christian parents, while a training mindset may feel new, the model has been firmly established through the life and ministry of Jesus. Consider, for instance, how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He didn’t merely tell them, “Go pray,” and then repeatedly demean them when they didn’t. Rather, the master trainer modeled a life of prayer (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16), taught them why we pray (Matthew 7:7–11; Mark 9:29), showed them how to pray (Luke 11:2–4), and then sought to keep them going (Luke 18:1). Imagine the impact in our homes if we were to replace our culture of telling with a culture marked by that kind of training.

As a result of this one shift, we went from mainly reacting to far more often initiating toward our kids. More than that, we committed to not discipline our children for things we hadn’t trained them in yet. Admittedly, this commitment resulted in some awkward moments in public, when we observed a kid’s behavior and looked at each other with enlarged eyes, as if to say, “How have we never taught them about this at home!” As we shifted the focus toward training, though, the underlying message to our children was clear: we are with you and for you in your journey to maturity.

Should Go, Not Shouldn’t Go

It’s not a surprise that one of the first words a toddler learns to say is no. Sadly, many homes are dominated with parents repeatedly telling children what not to do. On multiple occasions, I’ve sat with fathers of adult children who tearfully lament their children’s decisions, saying, “I don’t get it; they were raised knowing what not to do.” Unfortunately, according to the apostle Paul, merely arming our children with an impressive collection of do not’s will not prepare them well for what lies ahead (Colossians 2:21–23).

The vision to train in the way they should go is more than semantics. It’s a way of parenting that reflects the very heart of our heavenly Father, a heart that can be traced back to the garden of Eden. Contrary to popular memory, God’s first words were not, “Do not eat from that tree.” Before God gave that vital no, he first gave a far bigger yes: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Genesis 2:16). Our heavenly Father makes clear the way we should go so that when he does say no (which he does), we can be confident it’s to preserve us for life, not prevent us from life.

The subtle shift to intentionally focus on a positive vision led us to identify a big family YES: “The Bradner Family Creed.” Our creed (shared below) highlighted seven values we were committed to pursuing as a family. With these established and communicated, we embraced our role as the lead trainers who were constantly on the lookout for ways to model, teach, and celebrate the family living out our creed. Sixteen years later, we can confirm that it’s much more enjoyable to give your energy and effort toward a family yes than it is to be constantly telling kids no.

Old, Not Young

The final shift was found in the last part of verse 6: “when he is old he will not depart from it.” Imagining our children as adults has helped us play the long game in our parenting. It guards against unknowingly winning today’s battle at the expense of losing the war. We desire to parent now in such a way that our children want to engage with us when they no longer have to.

“We desire to parent in such a way that our children want to engage with us when they no longer have to.”

The long game may last for decades, but it begins now while our children are young. We didn’t want to wait until they left the house to create an environment they would want to return to. This desire shaped how we spoke to them — especially what we wanted them to hear most and least. If our kids were to hear us say the words, “How many times have I told you . . .” our hope is that it would be followed with something like, “. . . how much I love you and consider it a privilege to be your parent?” These are the kinds of words we want them to hear most.

Some might read this and conclude that we’ve adopted some parent-as-buddy relationship. No, we haven’t lost sight of our authority and responsibility to correct and exhort. We’re intentionally aiming to position ourselves for a lifetime of that kind of ministry. Henry Drummond captures the long-game perspective so well: “You will find that the people who influence you are the people who believe in you.”

The long game also shaped what we desire them to hear least. While the quick response “That’s not what we believe/think/do in this family” may save a few minutes in the moment, it robs parenting in the long run. Children who are always merely told how to think and what to believe — without thoughtful conversation — will eventually stop engaging those topics. While the Christian parent has the privilege of teaching what is right, that doesn’t mean we should do it like the fool, who “takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” (Proverbs 18:2).

“I’d love to hear more about why you think that” may take more time in the moment, but it will also bear much greater fruit in the years ahead. I’m certain that our adult children value our thoughts and perspective more today because they grew up in a home that valued theirs.

Our Best Investments

Looking back, it’s nearly impossible to quantify the impact of these three parenting shifts, but it’s been enormous. Parenting is hard, and so is being a child. Instead of shouldering anxiety today about who our children become as grown-ups, let’s give our best energy to creating a God-honoring and life-giving environment for them now. Sometimes the most transformative, enduring outcomes are a result of a few subtle shifts in perspective.

Bradner Family Creed (Est. 2006)We honor God.Every person matters.We are so thankful.We don’t speak “winese.”Can I help you with that?We give our best.We celebrate!