http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15875408/gods-righteous-judgment-on-christians-now

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Friday to close out the week. As you know, we get a lot of touching emails about marriage, like the one I’m going to read today. It’s from a grieving woman, an anonymous young woman, who lives in the Philippines. Here’s what she writes: “Dear Pastor John, I have been up until recently very happily married. I am now widowed. My husband died just a few weeks ago, and I am devastated. I believe there’s a reason for why I have been left behind. I trust God on that. I believe there’s a reason why he had to go. I can trust God on that. I believe that we can make it without him — myself, our young son, and the church my husband led. I find myself experiencing joy and longing, trust and nervousness, peace and homesickness for heaven.

“Aside from missing him and wanting the life we had back, what I can’t seem to wrap my head around are these questions. Why did God even allow me and my husband to share a love like ours on earth if this will mean nothing in heaven? Can’t I at least be guaranteed that my husband will still be my best friend in heaven? Will he even be excited to see me when I get there? In marriage, two become one. Am I just half a person left behind? I know when I get to heaven and enter God’s presence, none of these questions will matter. But they matter now. And I struggle to find wisdom and comfort as to how I must approach my remaining years on earth. Thank you.”

That’s a beautiful question, because it’s just so full of faith at the front end and then perplexity at the back end. The loss is still painful, and the questions are still real and urgent. So let me sit down, so to speak, with her for a few minutes and think out loud about three of her questions in the hope that maybe my reflections from the Bible and experience will bring some measure of Christ-honoring comfort to her.

Behind her questions is the teaching of Jesus in Mark 12:25: “When [married people] rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” In other words, marriage as we know it will not exist in the age to come. That’s behind her questions. That very fact is raising numerous perplexities for this young widow.

Echoes in Eternity

So, first, she wonders, “Why did God even allow me and my husband to share a love like ours on earth if this will mean nothing in heaven?”

The first thing to say in response to this question is that, in this present life, every relationship of love, and faithfulness, and loyalty, and sacrifice, and care will be celebrated for all eternity in tribute to the grace of God and the faithfulness of his obedient child. The “well done, good and faithful servant” that Jesus speaks to his faithful followers at the resurrection is a well done in every fruitful relationship (Matthew 25:23). Well done for that beautiful love. Well done.

God’s gracious approval of our imperfect works of faith is not a celebrative bubble that pops at the second coming and is forgotten for eternity. There are eternal good effects to all good done on the earth. Ephesians 6:8 says, “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.” Good parenting that lasts five years before a child is snatched away in a car accident; good chastity during engagement before a fiancé dies of a heart attack before the wedding; good faithfulness and intense, mutually self-giving romance in marriage that she describes — these will not be meaningless in heaven. They won’t.

“Every good and beautiful fruit of God’s Spirit in your life will reverberate forever.”

Every good and beautiful fruit of God’s Spirit in your life will reverberate forever to the tribute of his grace and your faith. That’s the first thing to say. The sweetness and intensity of the love between you and your husband will have its echo in the music of heaven. It wasn’t in vain.

God Saves the Best Wine

And the second thing to say about this question of why God gave them such sweet love is this: this world, in its most exquisite pleasures, is designed by God to show something of himself. The heavens and everything else are declaring the glory of God, the psalm says (Psalm 19:1). And all these pleasures are meant to awaken thankfulness now and strong anticipation of the age to come when the pleasures of this age will seem as foretastes of something vastly greater. They are. The pleasures of this present age, even the most godly of them, are not the point of the universe, but they are pointers to the point.

The Bible pictures the age to come as better than this life, not just because bad things will be taken away, but because good things will be seen to be only foretastes of better things — a better feast of pleasure. Jesus showed this when he said that marriage gets replaced by something better (Mark 12:25). Paul showed it when he described the resurrection as replacing this world with something gloriously better. Listen to these words from 1 Corinthians 15:42:

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42–44)

Now, we can’t conceive fully what a spiritual body is. But in Paul’s mind, it exceeded this present body, with all its pleasures, like the brightness of the glory of a blue sky exceeds a decaying, rotting seed in the ground.

“The happiest marriage in the world is but a head start on the joys of heaven.”

So, I conclude that the happiest marriage in the world is but a head start on the joys of heaven. It is the appetizer before the feast. It is the warm-up singer who’s really good before the great artist sings. God saves the best wine, just like Jesus at Cana, till the last (John 2:10). And in a happy marriage, even the first wine was really good.

Greater Melody of Love

Then our young widow asks, “Can’t I at least be guaranteed that my husband will still be my best friend in heaven? Will he even be excited to see me when I get there?” Now, she knows as well as I do, and she says as much at the end, that Jesus is and will be her best friend. She knows that. “No longer do I call you servants . . . but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

But I think what she’s feeling is that, while her husband lived, he bestowed on her something that nobody else on earth could give — a unique kind of affection, a love that gave her a very precious sense of belonging that nobody else could give on this earth. And she wonders whether she will have that sweet experience in the age to come, which only he was able to give her.

And I think the answer is we just don’t know what the music of love on earth is going to be like when it is transposed into the greater melody of the love of heaven, where there’s no sin whatsoever. This is the great unknown about the immeasurable joys of heaven. What will it be like when she and her husband are beyond the possibility of sin — the sin of self-pity, the sin of disregard? What will it be like when we are not capable of being disappointed, when we’re not capable of being sad at any relationship that God has established? Your husband, I venture to say, will be for you, and you will be for him, all that you need each other to be in order for your joy to be full in the presence of God.

Not Less, But More

And finally, she wonders this: “Since in marriage the two become one, am I just half a person left behind?”

The answer is no, you are not only half a person left behind. It’s not that simple. Yes, part of you is gone. I’ll admit that. I think you should own that, and that’s sad. Part of you is gone. Only he could draw out of you certain desires, certain kinds of laughter, anger, peace, and countless other inner responses that you can’t even put into words. He had become so embedded in your life that for him to be absent is, yes, for part of you yourself to be absent. That’s true. Things will never be just the same again. And it would dishonor him to think that they should be.

But consider this: not all that you became by union with him is lost. You know it’s not. You became a wiser, deeper, better person because of life with him. He did not take all of that with him when he left. You know he didn’t. You know who you are. And what you became through him is not less, but more than you were before he entered your life. God has not made you less, but more.

Things will never be the same. That’s true. But God’s call on your life now is to be the person you became through love with your husband, for the glory of God.

Recently, our family was staying with a family we love when they suffered a miscarriage. The wife had just finished her first trimester. The baby would have been number six for them, their second son, a boy they all loved deeply without meeting him. The family wept for hours.

Now, I could say more about the quiet and common pain of miscarriage (my wife and I suffered one early in our marriage), or about what I learned about grief as I watched this family lose this baby together, as a family. But one of the things that struck me most was how the church showed up and loved them in their loss. Because we happened to be staying with them that week, we saw more than most would ever get to see.

The ears were the first to come, leaning in and listening well. But the feet weren’t far behind, arriving early and ready to run errands. Then came the hands, carrying flowers and Starbucks drinks and donuts for the kids. And with them, the arms that wrapped themselves tight around the family and wouldn’t let go. The noses followed, with some of their favorite meals. The mouths were slower than normal to speak, but came with meaningful words of courage and hope. And sprinkled among the rest were the eyes, attentive and filled with tears.

A Hundred Roads to the Hurting

The tangible love we witnessed exposed a profound oneness in that unusual church, but the expressions of that love were anything but uniform. Some came right away; some the next day; some later in the week. Some could swing by for only a few minutes; others stayed longer. Some just dropped something off with a note, to give the family space to rest. Some brought food; others brought an iced macchiato or a taro milk tea. Most of them cried.

It’s hard to describe how unusual and heartbreaking and beautiful the whole scene was. This church had learned how to grieve together, to carry each other’s burdens, to show up in hard moments. So where does this strange, otherworldly love come from? From a strange and generous kind of people.

The apostle Paul saw a scene not unlike the love my family witnessed. He writes to the church at Corinth,

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for 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 8:1–2)

The apostle is calling the believers in Corinth to give to the desperate needs of the embattled church in Jerusalem. He’s asking them to find their way to move toward the hurting, even if, in this case, the hurting are eight hundred miles away. To help inspire their generosity, he shows them just how much God can do when a church leans into suffering.

Unlikely Help and Generosity

The churches in Macedonia were not doing well by worldly standards. They were afflicted themselves, bearing the pain and weight of their own hardships. And not just normal affliction, Paul says, but severe affliction — the kind that cuts deeper, spreads further, and lasts longer.

And in the midst this awful affliction, making their valley even scarier and more upsetting, they were running out of money. Again, this wasn’t typical poverty; it was extreme poverty, some of them perhaps putting hungry kids to bed, their hollow eyes searching for hope that tomorrow might be different. Can you hear their parents pleading, through tears and stomachaches, “Lord, give us this day our daily bread”?

Yet, in the storms of affliction and the shadows of scarcity, we find an outstretched hand, a bright and warm light beating back the darkness, a wealth of generosity. And behind that outstretched hand, an even more surprising smile — an impossible smile, really. An abundant joy. With God, a people without any earthly wealth had found a way to be wealthy toward others. A people burdened with their own needs found more than enough to meet someone else’s.

If even the severely afflicted and seriously needy could move toward the suffering, how about the lightly afflicted and the rarely hungry? How might we find and experience what stirred up such unlikely help and generosity? Before holding out our hand, we first lift up our eyes to God.

Godward Otherness

The kind of people who are ready to move toward suffering when it comes — even in affliction, even in poverty, even when everyone would understand if they focused on themselves — are the kind of people who are always moving toward God. Paul continues,

They gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints — and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. (2 Corinthians 8:3–5)

The saints in Macedonia were not only willing to give, but begged to give. They had tasted the deeper pleasures of sacrifice (see Acts 20:35), and they wouldn’t surrender that joy without a fight. How did they arrive there? What path took them to such happy selflessness? “They gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.” They gave beyond their means, they gave far more than anyone expected, because they had given themselves to God.

“An unusually generous life will always be an unusually Godward one.”

They had not set their hope on the possibility of better, more comfortable circumstances. They weren’t tempted by the uncertainty of riches. No, they had set their hearts on God. And a heart set on God learns to define words like wealth, poverty, risk, sacrifice, and security differently. As they surrendered their claim on their earthly possessions, they stumbled into a treasure that could not be counted (1 Timothy 6:18–19). An unusually generous life will always be an unusually Godward one.

Marriage of Abundance and Need

Faithful Christianity, however, is never merely God or people, but God then people. “They gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.” The sweetness of enjoying God drove the Macedonians to bravely step into the sorrows and loss around them (in this case, in the church at Jerusalem).

Some of us need to be reminded to begin with God. Others need to be exhorted to regularly, tangibly emerge from communion with God and meet some real need. Notice how God allows abundance and need to dance in the church:

I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. As it is written, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.” (2 Corinthians 8:13–15)

In any given church — in your church — God has married real abundance and real need. Just like the needs, the abundance comes in various kinds, at various times, to various people. In some seasons, you’ll be especially needy, and in others, especially supplied. You’ll be needy in ways others aren’t, and rich in ways others lack. And this marriage is a shadow of an even greater love, when the God of infinite abundance took on need to make us truly wealthy: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Love in the local church, Paul says, should look a lot like the manna that sustained God’s people in the wilderness. Except instead of sending it from the clouds, God now delivers and provides through the body of Christ, the local church — more specifically, through you and me.

In Every Good Work

The kind of generosity Paul has in mind isn’t only financial. In fact, most generosity in the church isn’t financial. It’s costly, for sure, but often not in dollars and cents. Listen to the apostle summarize his burden for the church:

The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:6–8)

“Whoever you are, and whatever you have, God will give you enough to overflow to others, especially those in need.”

In every good work. Not only in coins delivered to Jerusalem, but in home-cooked meals and familiar living rooms, in notes of encouragement and unexpected phone calls, in pots of coffee and thoughtful questions, in visits to the valleys of grief. Whoever you are, and whatever you have, God will give you enough to overflow to others, especially those in need.

So find your way to move toward the hurting. Don’t assume someone else is checking in. Don’t assume someone else will send a meal. Don’t assume they’re overwhelmed with messages and visits. When the trial comes — when sickness falls, when the job disappears, when the marriage collapses, when a loved one dies — assume God plans to meet one of their many needs through you.