Jean-Pierre Adams was a French footballer in the 1970s and 80s, and he passed away on the 6th September, aged 73. But what makes this story remarkable is that for the past 39 years he has been in a coma, looked after tirelessly by his wife. In 1982 he went for routine knee surgery. The anaesthetic, meant to knock him out for a few hours was mis-administered, and he would never regain consciousness.

Last week I came across a remarkable story. Jean-Pierre Adams was a French footballer in the 1970s and 80s, and he passed away on the 6th September, aged 73. He was capped 22 times for France, and was part of a formidable defensive duo for the national side. He played over 250 games for Nice, Nimes and Paris Saint-Germain.
But what makes this story remarkable is that for the past 39 years he has been in a coma, looked after tirelessly by his wife. In 1982 he went for routine knee surgery. The anaesthetic, meant to knock him out for a few hours was mis-administered, and he would never regain consciousness.
At this point his remarkable wife, Bernadette Adams, stepped in. After some months in hospital, and seeing that he had developed infections through bed sores, she took him home. And there for 39 years she has cared for him.
She would sleep in the same room, getting up in the middle of the night to turn him. She would wash, shave, toilet and dress him daily. She prepared his food and fed him. She talked with him, gave him presents. She worked to ensure his muscles were exercised to avoid atrophy and its accompanying pains. She rose at seven each morning, and cared for him until he would fall sleep at around 8pm—if things went well, otherwise it could be all night.
For four decades.
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Those who have a discouraging awareness of the sorrow of reaping or who are living in dread of it. Perhaps you came to Christ late in life after so much damage had already been done. Perhaps you came to Christ early but spent many years in apathy or disobedience. You need to know that God’s grace is sufficient to redeem your failures. Because of his grace, none of us experience all the reaping we could. Because of his grace, none of us have to fear even  a moment of this life or the life to come. Yes, there may still be consequences for your sin. But even this will not be purposeless. Even this will be found to have been used by God for his good purposes. Take heart. “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:14).

Our only experience of aging is within this sinful world. We don’t know what aging would have looked like if this world had remained unsullied by sin. We do know, however, that aging would have still occurred. Before God created people, God created time. So God created people to exist within time and pass through it. Thus, babies would have grown to be children and children would have matured into adulthood. Perhaps the benefits that come with aging would have continued ad infinitum without any of the negative effects we see and experience. We just don’t know.
(Did you read part one of this series? You can find it here: Aging Gracefully.)
What we do know is that in a world like this one, aging has a strong association with pain and sorrow. Though aging is not without its benefits, it is known first for its sorrows. We experience this sorrow because greater age brings greater exposure to sin and its consequences. As we pass through time, we see more and more of the sin that lies within our hearts. As we accumulate years of experience, we also accumulate a deeper knowledge of the sin that inhabits other people’s hearts and comes out through their words and actions. With every day, with every year, we see and experience in greater measure the consequences of sin in the world around us—death, destruction, disaster. It adds up to a great weight of sorrow.
This sorrow is universal. Even Christians experience sorrow in aging. They, too, find that greater age brings greater sorrow. It comes in many forms. Here are five of them.
The Sorrow of Weakness
As we age, we experience the sorrow of weakness. Of course, as we first begin to age, we grow stronger. As we pass from infancy into childhood and from childhood into adulthood, our bodies grow and strengthen. From his vantage point in old age, Solomon says, “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth” (Ecclesiastes 11:9a). He goes so far as to say, “The glory of young men is their strength” (Proverbs 20:29).
But that strength does not last long, does it? There are a few years of growth followed by many years of decline, a few years of strength followed by many years of weakness. For men and women alike, physical strength peaks in their 20s or 30s before settling into a long decline. Muscle mass, bone density, metabolism, and even the senses begin to deteriorate. Most athletes retire by 37 or 38 years old, when they still have more than half their lives to live. They simply can’t keep up anymore.
One of the most sorrowful passages in all of the Bible talks about the sorrow of weakness.
Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low—they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails… (Ecclesiastes 12:1-5a)
This is a poetic description of the body weakening and failing. Eyes dimming, hands shaking, feet shuffling, back bending, teeth missing, voice trembling. It is a pathetic contrast with the strength and vigor of youth. And the decline of our bodies only grows steeper with age. There is sorrow in seeing our bodies weaken and decay.
The Sorrow of Weariness
Added to the sorrow of weakness is the sorrow of weariness. Old Solomon knew this  sorrow as well, for in Ecclesiastes 1:8 he exclaims: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” A long hike brings deep fatigue; a long life brings deep weariness. How could it do anything else in a world so stained by sin and its consequences? The longer we live, the more of this weariness we experience, and this weariness presses down on our bodies, our minds, our souls.
A pastor once visited our church and told of the trials he and his congregation had been enduring. Most recently and most painfully, his dear friends had lost their unborn child. They had just one opportunity to carry a child and for eight-and-a-half months, the pregnancy had progressed normally. The day was fast approaching! Then, only two weeks from full-term, the child had died and been stillborn. What tragedy. What sorrow. Standing before us that day he said, “I hate this world right now. All it has done is break my heart. None of us want to stay here. All this world does is fool you and fail you. It over-promises and under-delivers.”
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There is nothing about your sin that wants to help you along this journey, dear friend. It wants you to be as lame and crippled as you can possibly be as it sucks the very life out of you. It wants the world around you to see an unclear picture of Jesus—one that is insufficient, one that is weak and unable to save men’s souls. That’s what your sin wants.

Mortification of sin is not often discussed openly in churches these days. It sounds very Puritan. In a sense, it is. If anyone had a deep understanding of the reality of sin and its impact, it was the Puritans. What’s even more unfortunate is the dilution, perversion, and complete loss of the principle itself. Absence of the mortification of sin in the contemporary church, however, has not removed the principle from Scripture.
Put to death what Is earthly in you.
In his letter to the Colossians, Paul deals with the dynamic of our new nature versus the combative presence of the old:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:1-4)

The first four verses of chapter 3 talk about our new identity. It’s the substance of what life in Christ is. Paul frames his entire argument with “If you have been raised with Christ.” In other words, if we in fact have been made alive, these are his instructions with regard to remaining sin.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. (Col. 3:5-8)

When Paul is laying these things out, he is not doing it in a way that is encouraging hypocrisy. He is not saying, “I want you to stop doing these things only so that you can appear moral and pious.” He’s saying, “I want you to put these sins to death, because as Jesus said, you are to be holy.” The sin in your life needs to be rendered completely helpless with regard to influencing your living and your relationship to God. Here are three reasons Christians work to mortify sin:
1. God’s wrath will be poured out on all unrighteousness.
When we mortify sin in our bodies and minds, we imitate the way our heavenly Father has mortified the wages of our sin through Christ.
The reason Christians struggle so deeply with the presence of unconfessed and unrepentant sin in their lives is because they know God sees it, they know what God is capable of toward it, and they know they are acting outside of their new identity.
Jesus did not die to allow God to shrug off our sin; he died to justify who we are before the holiness of God. The theologian R. C. Sproul says this about sin:

Sin is cosmic treason. Sin is treason against a perfectly pure Sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward the One to whom we owe everything, to the One who has given us life itself. Have you ever considered the deeper implications of the slightest sin, of the most minute peccadillo? What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey Him at the slightest point? We are saying no to the righteousness of God. We are saying, “God, Your law is not good. My judgement is better than Yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I am above and beyond Your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what You command me to do. (R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, p. 116)

If God is the ruler of this universe, there is nothing about sin that he, even as our Father, flagrantly dismisses. If that were true, there would be no need for sanctification.
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Homeschooled children are certainly not immune from depression or other forms of mental illness, but their situation allows for greater social stability and positive interaction in the face of COVID-19. Their social circle is founded not on a massive faceless institution, but on the more intimate confines of the home and family. The greater degree of control that responsible parents have over the social circle of their homeschooled children both expands the number and types of people they interact with while limiting negative socialization.

After more than a year of remote learning, students in New York City finally went back to school. Sadly, the city’s Department of Education fear of COVID-19 and servitude to teachers’ unions means that these schools will more closely resemble Siberian gulags than places of learning.
A recent opinion piece in the New York Post details the ridiculous lengths that many of Gotham’s schools are going to in order to defeat the virus, including “masked and distanced” recess, health concerns over many sports and other extracurricular activities that require “increased exhalation,” and the cancellation of field trips, group projects, and class parties. Despite returning to school, New York City kids are still forbidden from connecting meaningfully with their peers.
Ask any homeschooling parent to discuss the pushback that he’s received from friends and family over the years and he’ll tell you that the need for his children to be “properly socialized” has topped the list of concerns. “How will your kids learn to interact with different kinds of people if they don’t go to school?” these mostly well-meaning people ask, implying that learning at home will doom your children to a life of misanthropic isolation.
The long-standing myth that homeschooled children grow up to be socially awkward is easily debunked because it proceeds from the false (indeed, patently absurd) premise that, prior to the advent of mass public schooling in the mid-nineteenth century, children did not learn to get along with either their peers or other social groups.  This myth persists despite multiple studies that reveal that a majority of homeschooled children are just as well-socialized (or even better socialized) than their public school peers.  The socialization process is somewhat different for homeschooling parents, but these differences (largely in parental supervision and diversity of age range in social groups) are key benefits of homeschooling, not flaws.
For decades, members of the educational establishment have used the need for socialization to argue that kids are better off in government-run schools than being taught at home. Recent developments in American education during the Age of COVID, however, reveal that this argument is not just fundamentally flawed, but officially dead.
Newsflash: Masks and Social Distancing Make Socialization Difficult
Claims about the social benefits of modern K-12 education never made much sense to begin with. In this model, instead of organically meeting and interacting with others through a variety of community institutions (neighborhoods, churches, etc.), children spend most of their social time being forced to engage with a very small subset of individuals: those who were born within a few months of them.
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“Because Braid publicly admitted guilt in violating Texas law by killing a baby whose life was protected by that duly enacted law, Operation Rescue has filed a complaint with the Texas Medical Board seeking an immediate emergency suspension of Braid’s Texas medical license,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “The emergency suspension is necessary to prevent him from further illegal conduct and to ensure the protection of innocent lives.”

A Texas abortionist, Alan Braid, went to the Washington Post to boast in a commentary over the weekend that he broke Texas’ new pro-life law banning abortions after about six weeks.
Now he’s finding himself on the wrong end of a campaign calling on the state to suspend his medical license.
NPR reported Braid bragged of breaking the law which was allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to stand.
It is unique is that most pro-life requirements are enforced by a government. But not Texas’ S.B. 8, which allows that anyone who aids anyone else in getting an abortion “runs the risk of being sued for at least $10,000,” NPR said.
Braid, in the article, boasted he performed an abortion despite the state law on Sept. 6, which prompted the pro-life Operation Rescue organization to file a complaint with the Texas Medical Board.
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Luther believed that the Lord’s Prayer was an excellent model for prayer.  In fact, said Luther, had the Lord known a better prayer he would have taught us that one as well![4]  That being the case, it’s not surprising to find that Luther’s method is grounded in the Lord’s Prayer. In other words, Luther would take each part of the Lord’s Prayer and pray through it. 

You are a pastor in a small city.  You’ve known your barber for almost twenty years.  One day while he trims he asks for help in prayer.  He, like many others, struggles in that area.  So, you decide to go home and write a brief thirty-four page guide for him.  You even incorporate your friend in the work.  Encouraging attentiveness in prayer you write, “So, a good and attentive barber keeps his thoughts, attention, and eyes on the razor and hair and does not forget how far he has gotten with his shaving or cutting.” Once finished you decide to publish the work and it’s ready for popular consumption by the early part of the year.  Now, your friend and others have help.
What you just read is fact and not fiction. Peter Beskendorf, Martin Luther’s barber asked this very question.  In response, Luther wrote a brief book titled A Simple Way to Pray. It’s a little gem.  And it is exactly what you would expect from the pen of Luther, nothing more and nothing less. For example, in Luther’s pithy way he warns us not to become lax and lazy with regard to prayer because “the devil who besets us is not lazy or careless.”[1]
Luther also gives the sort of advice that you don’t hear very often today.  For instance, he says, “Finally, mark this, that you must always speak the Amen firmly.” He goes on to explain exactly what he means. As firmly as his amen, Luther says, “Do not leave your prayer without having said or thought, ‘Very well, God has heard my prayer; this I know as a certainty and a truth.’  This is what Amen means.”[2] I wonder how many of us need that simple but profound instruction.
But Luther does more than give encouragements and terse sound bites.  His simple way is nothing less than a way to pray. So, let me simply walk you through his method.
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This is a call for reflection. I know the places my heart has gone since March 2020. I also know how I ought to treat others. Those two things haven’t always meshed. As we stumble through the backside of 2021 together, let us consider how we can bless others. The world needs Jesus much more than it needs anything else.

It’s been a tough 18 months. The world has been wrecked by a pandemic that has taken the lives of 4.5 million people. Many others have been without work and have had significant changes to their daily lives and their “normal.” We’ve been asked to do things none of us have ever had to do. We’ve been asked to wear face masks in public. We’ve been asked to social distance. We’ve been asked to forego important things like graduations, weddings, and even funerals. The world has been turned on its head. To make matters worse, mistrust and division are at all-time highs. A divisive presidential election has divided the country and has even threatened to divide the Church. Two normal men were given messiah status, and we were told that if either one wins, we are all doomed.
When I look at the past 18 months, I can think of many ways I have repaid evil for evil. I can think of many times I’ve insulted those who have insulted me. I’ve become defensive when I heard of the difficulties churches in this country have faced due to COVID. Rather than seek reason and understanding, I’ve sought justice in the form of winning arguments and vilifying the people on the television. In the first few months of the pandemic, I was angry and just knew that this was all a major conspiracy.
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Written by Thomas R. Schreiner |
Thursday, October 7, 2021
If family members turn against God or have never turned to him, and we side with them to please them, we are siding against Jesus. The Lord gives grace, for there is nothing sweeter and more delightful than knowing Jesus. We are not to make our families an object of idolatry. Families are wonderful, but we are prepared to meet Jesus only if he is first in our hearts.

I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law (Luke 12:49-53).
The need for faithfulness and obedience as disciples (12:35–48) is followed by the purpose of Jesus’ mission. In saying that he has come to cast fire on the earth that he wishes were kindled now, Jesus certainly refers to judgment. In the OT fire often designates judgment. For instance, Jeremiah’s words are as fire that consumes the people (Jer. 5:14; 23:29; cf. Sir. 48:1).
Amos warns Israel to seek the Lord, lest he “break out like fire” (Amos 5:6). On the other hand, in Luke fire also refers to the transforming work of the Spirit (Acts 2:3), and in Isaiah 4:4 the Spirit as fire both cleanses and purifies. Thus both ideas are likely present here. Jesus, as in the next verse, anticipates his death and resurrection, the consummation of his work. The final day of judgment will not come immediately, but judgment and salvation are inaugurated when Jesus’ work on earth is completed.
Jesus Came to Bring Together
The reference to baptism looks forward to the cross, to the great saving and judging event of Jesus’ ministry.
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Doctrinal uncertainty captures not just the difference in relative importance of doctrine, but also the difference between how clearly Scripture presents a doctrine. Doctrinal uncertainty is inherently more focused on the text of Scripture itself. In this way, doctrinal uncertainty is an attractive alternative to doctrinal tiers when dealing with the question of why Christians disagree on some interpretations of Scripture and which interpretations are within orthodoxy.

You have probably heard the phrase “doctrinal tiers” at some point if you have been involved at Church for any length of time. Each Church I have attended in both my childhood and adult life have either mentioned doctrinal tiers or explicitly included them on their Church website. Suffice to say, at some point in your life I have no doubt you will encounter doctrinal tiers if you attend a Bible-preaching Church.
But what are “doctrinal tiers?” Is it a helpful concept? Are there any problems with using it? And is there a better way to solve the same problems doctrinal tiers tries to solve? In this post, I want to answer each of these questions and, in particular, propose an alternative to doctrinal tiers which I call “doctrinal uncertainty.”
What are doctrinal tiers?
Doctrinal tiers are a means to categorize different Bible doctrines in order of importance, orthodoxy or necessity of belief. The number of tiers, what each tier contains, and how the tiers are used varies from person to person and from Church to Church. I have seen them formulated as a pyramid and as a target. Essentially, doctrinal tiers is a way to answer the question “what doctrines and biblical interpretations can Christians disagree on and yet still be considered orthodox in their theology?“
Knowing what Biblical doctrines are essential to be considered saved and orthodox and what doctrines are “secondary” is a vital and practical distinction to make. And that is really all the tiers are: a method of categorization. It is a way of saying “this set of biblical beliefs you must hold to in order to be considered Christian, but these other issues, while important, have varying valid, orthodox interpretations.”
Generally “first tier” issues are the foundational doctrines of the gospel:

Who Christ is
What the nature of Sin is
What is the gospel
How is one saved

And so on. In contrast, secondary or tertiary doctrines include:

Infant baptism vs. believers’ baptism
The various eschatological interpretations
Views on Church structure

And others. From these lists, it is clear the first set deals with doctrines essential for saving faith while the second list deals with different practical matters of Church life and the interpretation of difficult passages.
Now, the concept of doctrinal tiers is important and helpful to a degree. By knowing where the lines of orthodoxy are drawn, Christians can contend for “essential” issues and agree to disagree on other issues. However, there are several problems with the doctrinal tiers model.
Issues with doctrinal tiers
1. Who decides how many tiers should their be and why?
This is a common problem I see when I read about doctrinal tiers: there is no “standard” for how many tiers one creates. Many Churches I know of have either two or three tiers. If you have two tiers, you divide up doctrines between necessary for orthodoxy and doctrines which Christians can disagree on. The three tier model adds another category, typically on doctrines which affect Church practice.
But hypothetically, one need not stop at two or three tiers. Why not four? Five? Ten? At some point the categories end up losing their usefulness, but I think this highlights an issue with the doctrinal tiers model: there is no limit to which you can categorize doctrines by degree of importance. As soon as you open the door for “ranking” doctrines so to speak, there is no reason you have to stop at two or three levels. This can create a situation where some doctrines are seen as “unimportant” simply because they are in a lower tier. Eschatology is a great example: I have met many people who refuse to study the topic because it is “less important.”
2. Who or what decides what doctrine goes in what tier?
This becomes more of a problem the more tiers you add to your model. Who decides which doctrines are essential and which can be safely disagreed upon? For the most part, Christians agree doctrines related to Christ and the gospel are tier 1. But what about different view on God’s providence in salvation? For some people, this is closer to a tier 1 issue than to other people.
Additionally, many of the tier 2 or 3 doctrines in Scripture have a direct relation to tier 1 doctrines. For example, your understanding of the doctrine of baptism (tier 2+) is not independent from what you believe about the gospel (tier 1). And as mentioned above, your view of God’s sovereignty in salvation (most of the time tier 2+) is integral to what you believe about the work of Christ on the cross (tier 1).
The issue with doctrinal tiers is someone has to sort all this out in a way that is not arbitrary. But if you examine what different Churches put into different tiers, you will find enough variation to call into question the process of how the doctrinal tiers are developed. Not every Church agrees with what doctrines goes into what tiers. How then does one discern what the “right” tier is to put a doctrine into? Without some objective or explicitly Scriptural process to decide what doctrines go into what tier, the decision potentially becomes arbitrary.
3. Is there a strong textual basis for doctrinal tiers?
A final critique of the doctrinal tiers model is the Bible generally presents itself as a unity of truth. What I mean by this is Scripture does not label its own doctrines or order them from “most important” to “least important”. Rather, the Bible is presented as God’s revelation to man as a whole. Moreover, doctrines are developed from synthesizing a wide variety of Biblical literature: poetry, prophecy, narrative, epistles, etc. Very rarely does Scripture explicitly say a certain doctrine takes priority over a different doctrine, such as ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) being in a “higher tier” than eschatology (doctrine of end times).
There are two potential exceptions to this general rule. The first is the Bible puts an enormous emphasis on God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ.
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When we experience a dire situation, we are tempted to wallow in shame and to despair and turn against others. We must remember and believe God’s promises and his Good News, but not just for ourselves. We must turn in faith and love and speak with hopeful confidence to those around us. This is precisely what we see in Adam’s naming of Eve.

Did you ever notice that Adam named Eve after the Fall? This small detail from the first few chapters of Genesis, given in a single verse, leads us to an inspiring truth in one of our closest relationships.
Initially, Adam called his wife simply “Woman” (Gen 2:23). But after their disobedience, he named her Eve, which means “life-giver” (Gen 3:20). She would be “the mother of all the living.” After she disobeyed God, Eve had every reason to believe she was anything but a life-giver. But this is the name Adam chose for her immediately after hearing the full impact of their sin and failure from their holy God.
This is an unexpected turn. Earlier, Adam had sidestepped his responsibility for disobeying God and resentfully blamed Eve, and ultimately God, for his failure. God then pronounced a sentence on each of them—to her, pain in childbearing—to him, relentless toil in his work. Their lives together would be marked by struggle. It was a somber and devastating moment.
But instead of nursing resentment and continuing to blame his wife, Adam’s immediate response and first act of loving leadership was to rename her “life-giver.” For though God had announced curses upon them, he also gave them a magnificent promise of redemption (Gen 3:15).
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