http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15090624/finite-sinful-headship-in-marriage
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Your Apostle and High Priest
Part 1 Episode 221 Why does it matter that Jesus is called both the apostle and high priest of our confession? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper turns to Hebrews 3:1–6 to show how these two titles meet our two greatest needs.
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A Faithful Man Who Can Find?
I first got to know the man who became my father-in-law when I began to date his beautiful, godly daughter. That was half his life ago, and two-thirds of mine. It didn’t take me long to size him up; Glenn was a man of immense, transparent integrity.
His reputation had preceded him. He was known in our church to be a man who loved Jesus, who loved his wife, and who loved his two daughters. He was also looked on and respected as a leader.
But when his beautiful, godly daughter put me in privileged proximity to him, I discovered what he was really like: he surpassed his reputation. And now, after forty years of firsthand experience, I can honestly say that my respect for this man has only increased.
If I had to sum up my father-in-law’s character in a single word (which in reality doesn’t do him justice), I would choose the word faithful. Glenn is a faithful man, by which I mean he is true to his word. Which also means he is a rare man in this fallen world.
Rare Like Gold
The wise, Spirit-inspired writer was sadly spot-on when he penned these words:
Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find? (Proverbs 20:6)
The author is referring to the kind of man who displays an overall consistency between his words and his works, between what he professes to believe and how he behaves, between what he promises and what he performs.
This is the way just about every man wants to think of himself — or at least wants others to think of him. But the truth is, not many men are essentially and consistently faithful.
But my father-in-law is one of those exceptional men. Like gold, he is a rare find. In fact, his is a rarified kind of faithfulness, a kind that exceeds the common-grace variety. His faithfulness is a supernatural outgrowth of his being united by faith with Jesus, his Lord. His faithfulness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22).
And one of the great benefits I’ve received from being in privileged proximity to such a man is witnessing what this fruit looks like after a lifetime of faithfulness.
Gift of Being Taken for Granted
One such fruit is that my father-in-law is a man you can take for granted. Lest that sound insulting rather than honoring, here’s what I mean: Glenn is a man whose word you can trust. As I explain in True to His Word,
In Scripture, when a person is described as “faithful,” it’s almost never referring to how much faith that person possesses, but to how much faith others can place in that person — how much others can trust him to perform what he promises. A faithful person honors, cherishes, maintains, and guards the faith of those who put their trust in him. (12)
“There are few gifts a man can give to us more precious than the gift of our being able to assume his trustworthiness.”
There are few gifts a man can give to us more precious than the gift of our being able to assume his trustworthiness. We might be tempted to say that love is more precious, but at bottom, faithfulness is an inherent expression of love (see 1 Corinthians 13:7–8). It is a person’s love that honors, cherishes, maintains, and guards the faith of those who put their trust in him. This is Godlike love, since Scripture repeatedly describes God as showing “steadfast love and faithfulness” to his people (Psalm 25:10).
That’s the gift my father-in-law has given his wife, his daughters, those of us in his extended family, his friends, his fellow church members, his neighbors, the innumerable people he worked for and with during his vocational life: the gift of assuming his trustworthiness.
Who can possibly put a price on that?
What a Faithful Man Builds
It’s almost poetic that my father-in-law spent his vocational life in construction, because what he’s built relationally with his trustworthy character is strong, durable, and beautiful, like what he built with his skillful hands.
I see it in his marriage. His steadfast love and faithfulness to the beautiful, godly wife of his youth has meant that for 57 years (and counting) Lois has been able to stand on the vows Glenn made to her before God without fear that the floor of his fidelity would collapse underneath her.
I see it in his family. Like every father and grandfather, he gets his share of teasing and suffers the indignities of needing to be tutored on pop culture and new technologies. But he has the loving respect of his daughters, his sons-in-law, and his grandchildren because they all have been the beneficiaries of his steadfast love and faithfulness. They all trust him. This is perhaps most clearly seen when one of them brings some fault or sin to his attention; they do it because they know he can be trusted to receive it.
I see it in the church where he’s been a faithful, involved member for over forty years. He’s still known as a man who deeply loves Jesus, his wife, his family, and his church. And he’s still respected as a leader, though not just for what he does but who he is. Leaders and laypersons look to him because he truly cares for them, listens to them, serves them, encourages them, prays for them — in other words, he extends to them his steadfast love and faithfulness. Therefore, they trust him.
I see it in his neighbors — former neighbors, I should say. Last year, after my wife and I purchased and moved into the home where Glenn and Lois had lived for 44 years, we got to attend a farewell picnic the neighborhood threw for them. And if you could have heard the stories. As I listened, I realized these folks had come to see Glenn as something of a neighborhood chaplain. He not only knew everybody; he knew them personally. He had taken particular interest in each of them; he had come to their aid in need; he had offered his ear, his counsel, and his prayers when they were in pain. Even now, when he comes to the house, his former neighbors start making their way over to greet him. It speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
My father-in-law built many impressive things with his hands during his life. But in my estimation — and more importantly, in God’s estimation — the most impressive things he built were the relationships of love and trust through his steadfast love and faithfulness.
Putting God on Display
As a skilled master builder, my father-in-law knows better than most just how important a foundation is to the structure it supports. So, it’s no small thing when I say that the firm foundation of Glenn’s life, the granite upon which everything else in his life is built, is God and all God promises to be for him in Jesus.
But as a man who loves the glory of God, Glenn would not want this metaphor to be misunderstood. As John Piper says,
Foundations are invisible and are seldom thought about in the daily life of the house. They are taken for granted. They are silently assumed. But God wills not only to be the massive, silent, unseen foundation beneath the walls of our . . . lives; he also wills to be the visible capstone adorning the top and the brightness of the glory that fills the house for all to see.
That’s why, when we met for breakfast recently, Glenn told me, as he has repeatedly over the years, this time with tears, “I just want to put God on display.” That is the heart cry of an exceptional man, a man who has known through experience the steadfast love and faithfulness of God and can’t help but long to extend that kind of love to others in the hope that, through him, they too will come to know the Fount from which it springs.
And Glenn has put God on display, in both word and deed. God has not merely been the firm foundation of Glenn’s life; God has been visible at every level in the entire edifice of his life.
Honor of a Lifetime
The apostle Paul tells us that we must “pay to all what is owed to them,” including “respect to whom respect is owed [and] honor to whom honor is owed” (Romans 13:7). So, it’s only right that I pay what I can of the respect and honor I owe this faithful man. It is an immense and joyful debt of profound gratitude.
But Glenn has a far better payment of respect and honor coming to him. And it’s coming directly from the mouth of the God Glenn so deeply loves and so beautifully displays. It is the exceeding riches of respect and honor God will bestow on all of his faithful children, and it will more than pay off all the outstanding debts any of us owe to each other:
Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. (Matthew 25:21)
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If God Desires All to Be Saved, Why Aren’t They?
Good Friday, everyone — literally. It’s Good Friday on the calendar, a day set apart for serious joy, set apart for us to dwell on the death of our Savior Jesus Christ. This holiday is no funeral. It’s a celebration. It’s that odd celebration of ours, and “the main song” of eternity, that eternal song about the “unparalleled beauty and worth of the reigning Lamb, Jesus Christ, who was slain” (APJ 1601; Revelation 5:6–14).
Today’s episode is not Good Friday focused, per se. But perhaps we will get into the majesty and mystery of the cross in God’s design. The question I think leads us here. We’ll see. It’s from a listener named Tim. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. First Timothy 2:3–4 says God desires all men to be saved. He desires that end. But not all men are saved. Does that mean (1) God will not do what he wants to do? Or (2) God cannot do what he wants to do? It has to be one of these two options, right?”
No, because what the Bible shows over and over again is that there are, in many cases, two wants — W-A-N-T-S — two wills in God, not just one. So it’s not accurate to say that God will not do what he wants to do, since in choosing to do what he does not want to do, he’s doing, in another sense, what he does want to do. It would be superficial to jump to the conclusion that God is schizophrenic or double-minded or perpetually frustrated because, in the infinite complexity of God’s mind and heart, there are ways that he experiences multiple desires — layers of desires or wants or wills — in perfect harmony, each expressing some aspect of his nature in proper unity with other aspects.
God’s Wills in Scripture
Let me illustrate what I mean when I say the Bible repeatedly points to these different levels or ways of wanting or willing in God. For example, now, in 1 Timothy 2:4, the text that Tim is asking about, Paul says, “[God] desires” — that word is thelei in the Greek, which means “wills” or “desires” — “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” But he does not save all. Now, why not?
Everybody has to face this, not just certain groups. Everyone who believes, as all Christians do, in the wisdom and power and goodness of God would say that the answer is that some other will — or some other desire or commitment of God — takes precedence over the desire for all to be saved. I think everybody would say that.
One group, sometimes called Arminians, says it’s because God is more committed to our free will, our ultimate self-determination, than he is to saving all. The desire to preserve human self-determination takes precedence over the desire for all to be saved. That would be the way an Arminian would describe it. The other group, sometimes called Calvinists, says that God is more committed to glorifying his own free and sovereign grace than he is to saving all.
Now, I think this second answer is right. One of the reasons I do is because of what 2 Timothy 2:25–26 says.
God desires repentance and withholds it.
In 2 Timothy 2:25–26, Paul says that we should exhort sinners with patience and gentleness, and “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,” which is a phrase from back in 1 Timothy 2:4. In other words, the reason some people believe and some do not believe is not because they have ultimate self-determination, but because God may or may not grant them to repent and believe. It’s a gift of sovereign grace.
“God wills that all be saved, but in another sense, he does not will that all be saved.”
So God wills that all be saved, but in another sense, he does not will that all be saved. One of these inclinations is a real expression of compassion, and the other is a real expression of sovereign wisdom and the freedom of grace. Now, I’m going to come back to that with an illustration from history that might make it a little more intelligible, but let’s keep giving illustrations of this idea of multiple layers of willing or desiring in God.
God forbids murder and ordains it.
Here’s another example. He commands, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). His will is that people not murder. That’s God’s will. But Acts 4:27–28 says that “Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,” in murdering Jesus — they all teamed up and murdered him — did “whatever [God’s] hand and [God’s] plan had predestined to take place.” God planned the death of his Son at the hands of murderous, wicked men. Our salvation hangs on this reality. This is at the center of the gospel. This issue of God’s sovereignty over sinful men is at the center of the gospel, not some marginal theological dispute. God’s will that his Son be murdered took precedence over his will that people not murder.
Bible students, for centuries, have seen this and have called these two wills by various names, like “will of command” and “will of decree.” Another set of phrases is “moral will” and “sovereign will.”
God forbids false witness and sends it.
Here’s a third example of these two layers or levels or kinds of willing in God. “You shall not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16). God’s will is that people tell the truth and not be misled, not think false thoughts, and not deceive others. Yet in 2 Thessalonians 2:10–12, it says,
[People] refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
They “believe what is false.” They speak what is false. They think what is false. Paul says God sent this delusion as a punishment. God’s will that people believe the truth and speak the truth is subordinated, in their case, to God’s other will, which is manifest in his sending them further into deception.
God cares for the wicked and destroys them.
Here’s another example. In Ezekiel 33:11, God says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” Yet God often in the Bible justly takes the life of the wicked. Isaiah 11:4: “He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” He does not have pleasure in the death of the wicked. That is, he does not desire it. Nevertheless, he brings that death about. “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand” (Deuteronomy 32:39).
God afflicts, but not ‘from the heart.’
Here’s one more example of these two wills in God. This example may take us most explicitly into God’s soul. At least, I have found for myself and for many people that Lamentations 3:32–33 is really illuminating concerning the nature of God and how his willing works. Here’s what it says: “Though he cause grief” — though God caused grief — “he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.” Now, this is really amazing. God does cause grief. God does afflict the children of men, but then it adds, “not . . . from his heart” (Lamentations 3:33). That’s a very literal and good translation.
“All of the wisdom and all of the moral realities that form God’s choices come from within God himself.”
Now, what are we to make of that? He wills to do it, but he does not will to do it “from his heart.” You can see why I say that the Bible, over and over, points to the mind and heart of God as complex: willing one thing, willing also that this other will not be put into action. And this is not owing — as it would be, say, in our case — to external forces. Nobody’s twisting God’s arm. All of the wisdom and all of the moral realities that form God’s choices come from within God himself.
Washington’s Example
Here’s an analogy that I said I would give to help perhaps make this a little more intelligible. This comes from The Life of George Washington. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote The Life of George Washington and tells the story that there was a certain Major André who had committed treason and put the new American republic at risk. George Washington signed André’s death warrant. He’s about to be executed. And John Marshall comments in his biography, “Perhaps on no occasion of his life did the commander-in-chief obey with more reluctance the stern mandates of duty and policy.” Two wills were operating in Washington: compassion and justice. One commentator on Washington’s decision said,
Washington’s volition to sign the death-warrant of André did not arise from the fact that his compassion was slight or feigned [unreal], but from the fact that it was rationally counterpoised by a complex of superior judgements . . . of wisdom, duty, patriotism, and moral indignation.
Then he adds, “The pity was real, but was restrained by superior elements of motive.” Washington had official and bodily power to discharge the criminal, but he had no sanctions in his own wisdom and justice to do it.
Similarly, I would say the absence of a volition in God to save does not necessarily imply the absence of compassion. It’s real. That willing in God, that desiring in God, is real. The fact that there are two wills in God points to a profound but complex unity in revealing aspects of God’s nature that are both true and both real. In our own experience, we may feel them as conflicting or as frustrating, but I think it would be rash to say that God experiences his compassion and the justice of his wrath that way. They are harmonious in God. He reveals them both to us so that we can get some true glimpse of what God is really like.