ABSTRACT: When the New Testament authors quote or allude to the book of Proverbs, they only occasionally draw explicit links to Christ’s person and work. Much more often, they use this book of ancient wisdom to teach, reprove, correct, and train Christians in righteousness. As Christian Scripture, Proverbs does indeed highlight Christ as the wisdom of God, but more than that, it illustrates the wise, God-fearing life that flows from vibrant faith in him.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Dan Estes (PhD, Cambridge University), Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Cedarville University, to help pastors preach the book of Proverbs as Christian Scripture.

Viewing all the Scriptures through the lens of Christ has a long history in Christian interpretation. In the past half-century, this long-standing approach has received renewed impetus by influential scholars and preachers as well as new commentary series, all of which have championed an emphasis on preaching Christ in all the Scriptures.

This approach prioritizes the biblical metanarrative that culminates in Christ. According to Edmund Clowney, “All the Old Testament Scriptures, not merely the few passages that have been recognized as messianic, point us to Christ.”1 In making this claim, the Christological hermeneutic examines every biblical text in its place in the unified redemptive plan of God that is centered in the work of Christ.

However, many have struggled to apply this Christological hermeneutic to the Wisdom Literature, including the book of Proverbs. So how can one preach Proverbs as distinctly Christian Scripture?

Identifying the Problem

Many New Testament texts cite the legal, historical, and prophetic books in the Old Testament as anticipating Christ through sacrifice and covenant. In addition, several psalms are explicitly linked to Christ (as, for example, Psalm 110 in Hebrews 5:6; 7:17, 21). However, numerous psalms, as well as many other parts of the Bible’s Wisdom Literature, are difficult to relate to Christ.2

When we come to the Old Testament wisdom books, and to the book of Proverbs specifically, an essential question arises: Do the wisdom sayings in Proverbs speak directly of Christ, or do they have broader reference to the people of God as they challenge them to live wisely in the fear of the Lord? Contending for a Christological reference, Benjamin Quinn writes, “When teaching Proverbs, we must remember and recognize Jesus all along the way. We remember Jesus as the one who is Wisdom incarnate, and we remember Jesus as the one who walked in wisdom perfectly, manifesting wisdom’s way in the world and modeling wisdom’s way to the world. Jesus is thus the hero of Proverbs.”3

However, proponents of preaching Christ in all the Scriptures acknowledge at least tacitly the considerable challenges of attempting to do that in the book of Proverbs. Many books that advocate preaching Christ from all the Bible leave Proverbs virtually untouched.4 In view of the infrequent references to Proverbs in such books, where does that leave us? How do the proverbs relate to Christ? To answer that question, we will need to consider some crucial exegetical data.

Examining the Evidence

Two passages in Proverbs that have most often been interpreted Christologically are Proverbs 8:22–31 and Proverbs 30:4. Proverbs 8:22–31 has had a long and contentious interpretive history; in particular, it played a significant role in the Arian controversy in the fourth century A.D.5 Some scholars contend that this passage depicts Wisdom as the Son of God and anticipates the coming of Christ as Wisdom incarnate.6 However, numerous proponents of preaching Christ from the Old Testament acknowledge that although this passage may foreshadow the role of Christ as the wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians 1:24, 30 and Colossians 2:3, it is better viewed as a poetic personification of wisdom. For example, Richard Belcher concludes, “It is difficult from an OT standpoint to argue that Lady Wisdom in Proverbs 8 is a divine hypostasis of Christ’s eternal divine nature. Lady Wisdom is consistently presented in Proverbs 1–9 as a personification of wisdom.”7

Similar uncertainties attend Proverbs 30:4. Agur’s question, “What is his name, and what is his son’s name?” has been directly linked with the words of Jesus to Nicodemus in John 3:13 by Clowney, who reasons, “Agur implies that to know God we need to have access to God: to have someone go up to heaven and bring back God’s word. Jesus affirms that the One who would ascend to heaven must first come down from heaven; indeed, that coming, He must also remain in heaven, His own home. He is the Son of Man; He will indeed ascend to heaven, but He has first come down from heaven, and can therefore speak of heavenly things.”8 Waltke, however, counters by reasoning, “The answer to Agur’s question . . . must be deduced from the firm lexical evidence that in Proverbs ‘son’ always refers to a student who listens to his teacher. The son whom Agur had in mind is Israel, as can be seen in many Old Testament passages, such as Exodus 4:22, where God called Israel His unique son.”9

Foundational for assessing how to preach Christ from the book of Proverbs is the narrative about Jesus in Luke 24:27, 44. Clowney argues, “If we are to preach from the whole Bible, we must be able to see how the whole Bible bears witness to Jesus Christ. The Bible has a key, one that unlocks the use of the Old Testament by the New. That key is presented at the end of the Gospel of Luke (Luke 24:13–27; 44–48).”10 Chapell makes the same point, although with a caveat: “Jesus related all portions of Scripture to his own ministry. This does not mean that every phrase, punctuation mark, or verse directly reveals Christ but rather that all passages in their context serve our understanding of his nature and necessity. Such an understanding compels us to recognize that failure to relate a passage’s explanation to preparation, aspects, or results of Christ’s ministry is to neglect saying what Jesus said all Scripture was designed to reveal. Full exposition of any text requires explanation of its relation to the One to whom all Scripture ultimately points.”11

Chapell’s caveat points the way toward a crucial corrective to those who might search for clear links to Christ in every Old Testament verse. As Daniel Block has reasoned, in the Old Testament the explicit references to the Messiah are precious, but they are rare, so “the Messiah is indeed an important theme of the Old Testament, but we exaggerate Luke’s interpretation of the significance of Jesus’ speech . . . if we assume that this is the theme of the Bible and look for the Messiah on every page.”12 Another factor to be considered is Luke’s frequent use of forms of pas (“all”) in an exaggerated sense, as for example in Luke 2:1, 3; 5:17; 6:17; 7:29; 12:7; 19:7; 21:17. I have argued elsewhere, “This interpretive issue could be compared to the difference between a political candidate claiming that every voter in all the fifty states supports him, and saying that voters in all of the fifty states support him.”13 In the context in Luke 24, it seems more feasible to envision Jesus explaining selected Old Testament scriptures that testified of him than to insist that in the short period of time with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus Jesus managed to elucidate all that was said about him in every Old Testament text.

It is also crucial to examine how the New Testament makes use of the language of Proverbs. Of the six direct quotations of Proverbs in the New Testament, all of them have referents other than Christ. Hebrews 12:5–6 cites Proverbs 3:11–12 in a reproof directed toward Christians. Proverbs 3:34 is quoted twice, in James 4:6 as correction to Christians and in 1 Peter 5:5 as instruction for younger Christians. Proverbs 11:31 in 1 Peter 4:18 functions as reproof for the household of God, that is, the Christian community. Proverbs 25:21–22 is used in Romans 12:20 as a corrective directed to Christians. Finally, in 2 Peter 2:22, Proverbs 26:11 is used in an extended condemnation of false teachers.

When the 53 allusions to Proverbs in the New Testament are examined,14 in 12 cases texts from the book of Proverbs are applied directly to Christ, the Son of God (Matthew 16:27; 25:40; Luke 2:52; John 3:13; 7:38; 9:31; Colossians 2:3; Revelation 2:23; 3:14, 19; 20:12–13; 22:12). In several other cases, the allusion relates more generally to God (Luke 16:15; Romans 2:6; 13:1; 2 Timothy 4:14) or specifically to the Father (1 Peter 1:17) or the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:11). By far, however, the allusions to Proverbs are directed toward mere humans, with 62 percent (3315 out of 53) functioning not as references to Christ but as teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness directed toward Christians.16 This biblical data demonstrates that in the New Testament, texts from Proverbs most often speak of the behaviors that should characterize the lives of wise, godly people, rather than referring specifically to Christ.

Approaching a Solution

In his essay “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C.S. Lewis differentiates between looking at a sunbeam and looking along a sunbeam.17 It has already been seen that only about a dozen of the wisdom sayings in Proverbs are applied directly to Christ in the New Testament, as they look at him. In 80 percent of the cases, quotations and allusions from Proverbs instead look along Christ as they teach, reprove, correct, and train Christians in their behavior. Paul Koptak reasons, “The larger context of wisdom literature supports the suggestion that the book is to be read as the education of a young man receiving the instruction of those older and more experienced than he.”18 Ernest Lucas adds the important point that “the sages are concerned with character formation. They want to produce better people who will produce a better world. The key to this is people whose ‘being’ is shaped by ‘the fear of Yahweh.’ This will then determine their ‘doing.’”19

When texts from Proverbs are alluded to in the New Testament, in most cases their original focus on the character formation of the youth is retained, but it is applied more broadly to all Christians. Thus, this anthology of wisdom sayings “provides a pedagogical resource for sanctification”20 pertaining to the believer’s completion in Christ (Colossians 1:28). What Proverbs enjoins is the quality of life of those whom Paul describes as spiritual people (1 Corinthians 2:15–16; Galatians 6:1), whose lives manifest a consistent pattern of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). Duane Garrett argues well, “The function of the Scriptures is not only to lead unbelievers to repentance and faith in Christ but also to instruct and nurture believers with truth that transforms our understanding and our lives. If this is so, then the believer must study the wisdom literature of the Bible . . . and the Christian minister must preach it. . . . Here we can learn to reject wrong and harmful behavior and to choose the paths that please God and bring happiness, the way of life that arises from faith in the Lord.”21

Proverbs invites us to preach to believers in way that endeavors to transform their actions, attitudes, and values more and more in the direction of Christlikeness, of being complete in Christ, which Paul stated was the goal of his ministry (Colossians 1:28).

Preaching Proverbs as Christian Scripture

How then can we preach Proverbs as Christian Scripture?

Following the pattern of the New Testament, we can occasionally draw connections between descriptions of wisdom in Proverbs and aspects of Christ, who is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24) and in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). In these cases, we preach Proverbs by looking at Christ.

“Only Christ in us can produce the desire and the ability to live wisely and to please God.”

However, much more often in the New Testament, texts from Proverbs are used to teach believers how to walk in the way of God’s wisdom. By this means, believers are exhorted to obey the imperative to work out their salvation (Philippians 2:12), grounded in the indicative that God is at work within them by his indwelling Spirit, thus giving them both the desire and the ability to do what pleases him (Philippians 2:13). In effect, the New Testament writers show us how to look along Christ as texts from Proverbs provide teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness for Christians.

As we preach Proverbs as Christian Scripture, we must keep several things in mind. First, read Proverbs as God’s wisdom for life, as its prologue indicates (Proverbs 1:1–7). In Proverbs, the wise person is one who is skilled in living according to the righteous standard of God — that is, living by the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning or essence of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). In writing about the Psalms, C.S. Lewis insisted that they must be read as poems if they are to be understood properly, or “we shall miss what is in them and think we see what is not.”22 Similarly, as we preach Proverbs, we must read and apply its sayings as wisdom, or we may miss what they do teach.

Second, link the imperatives of wise behavior with the indicatives of what God has done for and in the believer through Christ. If Proverbs is preached only as a moralistic call to shrewd living that is not grounded in the gospel, then it can be heard merely as a challenge to turn over a new leaf in an effort to achieve a happier, more successful life. However, if Proverbs is presented as God’s call to his people to revere him in all their actions and attitudes, then that requires a transformation rooted in the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to those who have placed their faith in him. Only the Spirit of Christ in us can produce the desire and the ability to live wisely and to please God.

Third, preach Proverbs as wisdom sayings, not as absolutes or guarantees. In every culture, wisdom sayings are memorable generalizations rather than comprehensive or precise teachings, and that is why they are often balanced by other maxims. For example, we say that “the early bird gets the worm,” but also that “haste makes waste.” Proverbs 26:4 counsels, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself,” but the next verse urges, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Neither saying is intended to be taken absolutely; rather, the wise person knows when to ignore the fool and also when to call the fool out. The familiar saying in Proverbs 22:6 has too often been touted as a formulaic guarantee that good parenting will produce good children, but that hardly explains the family in which some of the children follow their godly parents but others depart from the faith. In fact, Proverbs has much to say about the child’s responsibility as well as that of the parents.

Fourth, for the most part, preach topics from Proverbs rather than individual sayings. Several individual proverbs (such as Proverbs 3:5–6) and some groups of related wisdom sayings (for example Proverbs 26:13–16) can be expounded as independent literary units. However, the book of Proverbs most often presents a collection of sayings that do not appear to be set in an easily discernible context. To preach these, some diligent forethought and planning will be required. Read through Proverbs and select the sayings that relate to a particular theme, study each saying individually, and then synthesize them into a topical outline. Using this process, I once developed a sermon series from Proverbs on uncommon virtues that should be cultivated in the Christian life.23

Because the Old Testament is part of Christian Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16), the themes found in Proverbs are God’s word, by which “the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17). In addition, they often can be linked with exhortations to godly living in the New Testament. Ultimately, the righteous behavior exhorted in Proverbs is rooted in the imputed righteousness of Christ, which empowers those who are in Christ to walk in wisdom.

For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.

Those are the words of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a pastor in Scotland in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was born in Edinburgh in 1813, and what’s striking about his life (and that some still remember him today) is that he lived only twenty-nine years. He died of typhus fever in 1843.

Two years later, his friend and a fellow minister Andrew Bonar published Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M’Cheyne, which in time came to be published in over a hundred English editions. In Memoir and Remains appears a letter M’Cheyne wrote to a friend:

Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in His beams. Feel His all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and [rest] in His almighty arms . . .

Let your soul be filled with a heart-ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in Him. Let the Holy Spirit fill every chamber of your heart; and so there will be no room for folly, or the world, or Satan, or the flesh. (293)

Ten looks at Christ for every one look at self. I suspect M’Cheyne’s counsel was striking in his day. But now, some 180 years later, what are we to make of it, living in an age so saturated in, so dominated by the ruse of the almighty self?

Ten looks at Christ for every one look at self was a countercultural word in M’Cheyne’s day. And how much more so for us now? And what healing might there be for us in heeding his counsel? How impoverished are we for our subtle and overt fixations on and fascinations with self, dwelling in a generation that both nourishes the love of self in us and conditions us for greater and deeper attention to self than we otherwise might dare venture?

So I want to ask you to come with me on a journey. I invite you in these moments — as much as you’re able — to put self aside, and together let’s take ten looks at Jesus. In this first session, we’ll take five looks at him from eternity past to the cross, and then in the second session, from his resurrection to eternity future. And with each look, we’ll anchor our glance at his glory in at least one key biblical text and also a key theological term that seeks to capture some of the majesty we find in Christ. So, ten looks at Jesus.

Look #1: He delighted his Father before creation.

Not only did he exist before creation — with all its implications for his deity — but, as divine Son, he delighted his Father, as we’ll see. First, John 1:1–3:

In the beginning was the Word [that is, the divine Son, who would come as Christ], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

“What was Christ doing for the endless ages of eternity past before there was time itself? He delighted his Father.”

Jesus — the divine Son, who would, in time, become man — existed in the beginning with God the Father. John says (1) he was with God (literally, “toward God,” as in face to face) and (2) he was himself God. Before anything was created, he was. “All things were made through him, and [if that’s not clear enough, then] without him was not anything made that was made.” The Word, the divine Son, was not made. He was not created. He himself is God — God’s own fellow and God’s own self.

Our key term for Look #1 is preexistence. The divine Son, the second person of the Trinity, who we now know as Jesus of Nazareth and as the Christ, preexisted his human life (and all creation as well). Which we see deeply embedded in various ways throughout the New Testament:

First, he came. Mark 10:45: “The Son of Man came . . . to give his life as ransom of many.” John 3:13: “The Son of Man descended from heaven.” Hebrews 10:5: “Christ came into the world.” 1 Timothy 1:15: “Christ came into the world to save sinners.”
Second, he was sent. Galatians 4:4: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman.” The owner of the vineyard sent his Beloved Son (Mark 12:6).
Third, he was given. John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 8:32: God the Father “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all.”

So, fully God himself, Christ was given, he was sent, he came. And he preexisted not only his coming but the whole creation. So what was he doing for the endless ages of eternity past before there was time itself? He delighted his Father. And Proverbs 8:22–31 personifies God’s wisdom in such a way that for two thousand years Christians can’t help but see the preexistent Christ here. Divine wisdom speaks,

The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work,     the first of his acts of old.Ages ago I was set up,     at the first, before the beginning of the earth. . . .When he marked out the foundations of the earth,     then I was beside him, like a master workman,and I was daily his delight,     rejoicing before him always,rejoicing in his inhabited world     and delighting in the children of man.

Divine wisdom rejoiced in God, and God delighted in his wisdom. Or, Son rejoiced in Father, and Father delighted in Son. And this delight of the Father in his Son, before creation ever was, helps to explain the amazing claim of Hebrews 1:1–2:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

Did you catch that? The Father appointed the Son “heir of all things,” and then Hebrews adds “through whom also he created the world.” First, the Father, delighting in his Son, before creation, appoints him to be “heir of all things.” Then, with that appointment in view, God makes the world in order to fulfill his plan. Which means God made the world, and all its history, to give it as a gift to his Son.

“God made the world, and all its history, to give it as a gift to his Son.”

So, Look #1, the eternal Son delighted his Father before creation, and from that delight, the Father appointed to make a world and a story that would make much of his beloved Son, that would have him as its center and climax.

Look #2: He became man.

The preexistent Son — eternally begotten, not made — became man. So not only was he sent and given and came, but he became. John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The eternal Word, whom we heard about in John 1:1, “became flesh.” Meaning, he became man. He took on our flesh and blood, our humanity. 2 Corinthians 8:9: “Though he was rich [as God], he became poor [as man].”

But his becoming might pose a problem to our minds, depending on how we think about “becoming.” Does his becoming man mean that he ceases, somehow, to be God? Does he somehow empty himself of some of his deity, as if that were possible, so that he might become human? Do humanity and deity operate on the same level of reality, so to speak, as a zero-sum game?

Addition, Not Subtraction

Philippians 2:5–7 is the key text about his emptying:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, [being] in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. [We’ll come back to verse 8 in a few minutes.]

What does it mean that he “emptied himself”? Three observations:

Note his deity. “In the form of God” coordinates with “equality with God.” He shared in the Godhead, as one divine person among others, and as God in his own right.
This emptying of himself related to prerogative, we might say, not divine power. He did not grasp or cling to divine rights that might have kept him from entering into the finitude and limitations of humanity, and our fallen world, and the suffering that would come to him by virtue of his being human and coming as a creature.
This emptying, then — as Paul clarifies in the next line — was a taking, not a losing. He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

So, in becoming man, he did not jettison his deity, as if that were even possible, but he took our humanity — not subtracting deity, but adding humanity to his person — and thus he became man as well as God. Without ceasing to be God, he added humanity. He became the God-man.

Wholly Human

Our key word for Look #2 is incarnation. Which means the “in-fleshing” or putting on or the adding of human flesh, human nature, to his eternal divine person. He took on a human body. He was born. He “was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.” He grew, and grew tired. He got hungry and thirsty. He experienced physical weakness. He suffered. And as Colossians 2:9 says, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

But humanity is not only body. It’s also soul. To be fully man, he took on our full humanity, both body and soul. He displayed human emotions: sorrow, compassion, anger, joy. He groaned. He was distressed and troubled. He wept. He prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). As John Calvin summed it up, Christ “has put on our feelings as well as our flesh.”

But a human soul means not only emotions, but also a human mind. He increased, as Luke 2:52 says, not only in stature but in wisdom. And how else, but with respect to a finite human mind, might Jesus say in Mark 13:32 about his second coming, “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”? As God he knew all; as man he did not.

So too, we also can identify a human will in the God-man in addition to the divine will he shared with his Father with respect to his deity. So he can say in John 6:38, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

And then, when it mattered most, he chose with that human will to embrace the divine will, rather than the life-preserving impulse to which the human will is naturally given, when he said in Gethsemane, “My Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). (More on his human will to come.)

So, he became man, and so fully so that to the human eye and ear he was utterly, manifestly human. What a condescension, and what a dignifying of humanity as God’s crowning creature, that God himself would become one of us.

Look #3: He lived to his Father’s glory.

Here our key term is devotion. He devoted his human life on earth to his Father’s glory. At his birth, the angels announced, “Glory to God!” and at his death, a Roman centurion who stood by and saw him breathe his last, caught a glimpse of divine glory, and “praised God” (Luke 23:47).

Jesus consecrated his life to the honor and praise of his Father. Over and over again in the Gospels, the reported effect of his ministry is not that the crowds praised him but that they glorified God (Mark 2:12; Matthew 9:8; Luke 5:25–26). In fact, glorifying God is Matthew’s summary effect of all Jesus’s miracle-working:

The crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel. (Matthew 15:31)

So the effect of his life was glory to his Father. But what about Jesus’s own intent? Jesus says in John 5:43 that he comes not in his own name, but his Father’s. And he sums up his life in John 8:49 by saying, “I honor my Father.” And his intent to glorify his Father gets even more explicit as he approaches the cross. Three times in his high priestly prayer the night before he died, he prays,

I glorified you on earth. (John 17:4)

I have manifested your name. (John 17:6)

I made known to them your name. (John 17:26)

His ministry of healing, his teaching, his patience, his disciple-making, all stemmed from his utter devotion to the glory and honor and praise of his Father. And this both led to, and flowed from, various daily habits of devotion which fed his human soul on his Father and shaped his mind and heart for the work his Father had given him to do.

One way to capture it, which is both manifestly true in Jesus’s life and applicable to ours, is that he devoted himself to his Father’s word (in Scripture), his Father’s ear (in prayer), and his Father’s body (in the fellowship of the faithful).

It is striking to rehearse the place of the Father’s word in the earthly life of his incarnate Son. He was a man who was captivated first personally, and then in his teaching, by “what is written.”

In the wilderness testing, three times he quoted Scripture to combat the devil’s temptations.
In his hometown, he read from the scroll of Isaiah and spoke of its fulfillment in their midst.
He spoke of his cousin John as “he of whom it is written.”
He quoted Scripture as he cleared the temple of moneychangers and when he rebuked proud Pharisees.
Every step toward Calvary came, he said, “as it is written.”

The word of his Father, in Scripture, played a markedly central role in his life.

But also striking was Jesus’s pattern of retreat (for prayer) and return (for ministry). He was a man of prayer, who availed himself of his Father’s ear, often withdrawing from the daily patterns of city and town life to meet with his Father in the wilderness. Again and again he went to desolate places to pray, often alone.

But also, at times, he took his men. He says to his disciples in Mark 6:31: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” And in such times, as well as his daily investment in his disciples, he availed himself of the fellowship, of the corporate body of the faithful. Jesus too drew holy strength, and experienced holy shaping, through the lives of the faithful.

“Even the God-man availed himself of God’s daily means of grace for the good of his soul.”

And so, in looking at his life of devotion to his Father, we find, at bottom, a man of the word and prayer. Even the God-man availed himself of God’s daily means of grace for the good of his soul through habits of accessing and rehearsing God’s word, and approaching him in prayer, living in the fellowship of those also devoted to God.

Look #4: He humbled himself.

We return to Philippians 2, this time picking up verse 8:

. . . [being] in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6–8)

Jesus’s humbling himself not only had a climactic moment, but it was a life of obedience to his Father. So for Look #4, our key term is submission. To submit means to “accept or yield to the will or authority of another.”

Before His Parents

First, in becoming human, he submitted as a child to the authority of his human parents. Luke 2:51, after his visit to the temple at age twelve, says that “he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” By virtue of becoming human, he entered into various human relationships, and contexts, in which he was to have a disposition to yield.

There is nothing dehumanizing in such God-designed submission; in fact, nothing unbecoming of God himself in human flesh! Submission, then, we might say, is actually humanizing. Acknowledging the limits of our human knowledge and strength and abilities, and the God-ordained callings to which he gives us in variation, is to embrace our humanity and (for us) not to pretend we are God.

For Christ, though he was God, he also was human, and with respect to his human life, he righteously accepted and yielded to the will of those to whom he was assigned (by his Father) to submit, beginning with his parents.

To His Father’s Will

But of course his greatest and most defining submission came directly to the will of his Father. As we’ve already seen, in John 6:38 he says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Throughout his life, and culminating in Gethsemane, he chose to submit his natural human will to the divine will of his Father.

He was, in a sense, training his whole life for this. He was training his human will not only away from sin but toward his Father. And as he prays in the garden, “Father, . . . not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), he completes the lifelong project of humbling himself, and now at this most critical moment. He has humbled himself, and now, in unjust custody, he will be utterly humiliated — slandered, false accused, unjust beaten, flogged, and crucified. Yet not against his will, but chosen. He humbled himself.

In at least three distinct settings, the Gospels quote Jesus saying, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12; Luke 18:14; Luke 14:11). It is one of his most repeated teachings. And he not only taught it, but lived it. Jesus’s human life is the supreme manifestation of his teaching. He humbled himself and waited for his Father to exalt him.

Look #5: He died for sins not his own.

At this point we might ask, Why was such a man executed? He did not deserve to die. In fact, this is the only human life in the history of the world that did not deserve death — the only sinless human life.

Now our key term is substitution. His death, like the sacrificial system in Israel, going back to Moses, was substitutionary. An innocent party without blemish served as a substitute for the guilty and blemished. In ancient Israel, God ordained and permitted that under the terms of the first covenant, sacrificial animals, who did not themselves deserve death, might stand in — that is, might be substitutes — for God’s people who had sinned.

The reality of sin demanded reckoning. Sin is an assault on the glory of God. Sin, at its heart, is a preferring of other things to God, which profoundly dishonors him. Sin cannot simply be swept under the rug without God himself despising his own glory and worth.

So God designed, in his grace, a temporary measure whereby his people’s sin might be dealt with, without they themselves incurring the death they deserved. For centuries, God’s people knew this provision both as amazing grace and as anticipating something greater. After all, in the final count, as Hebrews 10:4 says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Human blood would be necessary.

Our Sins Laid on Him

And so for centuries, the shedding of sacrificial blood in Israel had anticipated one unimaginably great once-for-all sacrifice that would secure God’s full acceptance of his sinful people forever. It would have been one thing for Jesus himself, before the cross, to say that he would “give his life as a ransom for many” and then for his apostles Peter and John and Paul to explain it in greater detail. But remarkably this revelation that a single human sacrifice might somehow suffice for the sins of many came seven centuries before Christ in the mouth of Isaiah.

Telling of a coming suffering servant, Isaiah says, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). Why was he despised and rejected? Not for any failures of his own, as we might assume. Isaiah then dares to tread where Moses had only pointed:

Surely he has borne our griefs     and carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken,     smitten by God, and afflicted.But he was pierced for our transgressions;     he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,     and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray;     we have turned — every one — to his own way;and the Lord has laid on him     the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4–6)

It was our sorrows that made him a man of sorrows. Our griefs acquainted him with grief. He was pierced, he bled, for our transgressions. He was crushed, he died, for our iniquities. He was wounded by men so that believing souls might be healed before God. We whom he saves are the sinners, not the Savior. Yet on the righteous, unblemished one, God laid our iniquities. This is substitution. God condemned our sin in the flesh of Christ.

Willful, Blood-Bought Joy

As we close this first session, remember that Jesus chose it. His submission was not without joy. His was not obedience without willingness. He did not just endure death for those who believe; he embraced it.

Hebrews 12:2 says, “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.” And I would not be surprised if Hebrews leaned on Isaiah 53:11 to make such a stunning claim: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”

What sustained Jesus on that dark Friday we now call “Good,” on the single most horrible day in the history of the world? Joy. He saw ahead and was satisfied enough that what joy he tasted even then sustained him through the agony, distress, and anguish.

Unlike the animals who stood in temporarily as substitutes for God’s people in the old covenant, Jesus willed it, with his human will. He embraced it. It pleased him to give his own life as a substitute for sinners — for the joy of the many who would believe and the glory of his Father. What wondrous love is this.

Tim Keller didn’t write a book on prayer because he felt like an expert. By his own admission, he embarked on his yearslong study out of a sense of deficiency and necessity. He opens the first chapter by saying,

In the second half of my adult life, I discovered prayer. . . . It became clear to me that I was barely scratching the surface of what the Bible commanded and promised regarding prayer. (9)

When I first read those lines as a recent seminary graduate, I could hardly believe them. Tim Keller, a spiritual giant, preaching to thousands, publishing books, and yet barely scratching the surface?

He ties his prayer-life-changing discovery to his diagnosis of thyroid cancer in 2002. When the news came, he was in his early fifties and nearly thirty years into pastoral ministry. He had been pastoring Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City for more than a decade. And then cancer did what adversity often does: it sparked something of a revival in his heart, an awakened sense of both his spiritual neediness and the powerful privilege we enjoy on our knees.

His prayer crisis sent him on a quest deep below the surface to experience the awe and intimacy that God promises to those who pray. Twelve years later, he sketched out a map, in fifteen chapters, of all he’d tasted and seen for those who want to go deeper themselves.

Emboldening Humility

Part of the power of the book is in its endearing humility. At one level, it really is an extended confession of how (unconsciously) inadequate his prayer life had once been. In an interview after the book released, he shared,

My wife and I would never want to go back to the kind of prayer life or spiritual life we had before the cancer. I really thought that I had a good prayer life. And when I broke through into another dimension, I realized that, frankly, my prayer life wasn’t very good.

His own personal humbling, and the subsequent years of concerted effort to grow, make the book both convicting and emboldening. Convicting, because we may find ourselves receiving the same diagnosis he received: frankly, our prayer lives aren’t very good. Emboldening, though, because he makes a vibrant prayer life feel wonderfully possible again. He’s relentlessly realistic about the difficulties of genuine prayer, but he also models grace-filled, joy-hungry perseverance in prayer.

“I can think of nothing great that is also easy,” he writes. “Prayer must be, then, one of the hardest things in the world” (24). He’s after a deeper experience in prayer that he himself had neglected and forfeited over many years. In the first pages, he tells us what he wants the reader to feel when we pray:

This book will show that prayer is both conversation and encounter with God. . . . We must know the awe of praising his glory, the intimacy of finding his grace, and the struggle of asking his help, all of which can lead us to know the spiritual reality of his presence. Prayer, then, is both awe and intimacy, struggle and reality. (5)

This quest sent him deep into church history, where he knelt beside spiritual forefathers like Augustine, Luther, and Calvin (along with Owen, Edwards, Lewis, Lloyd-Jones, Packer, and more). He uncovers a letter Augustine wrote to a woman who feared she was failing in prayer. He comes alongside Luther as he counsels a barber broken by sin and tragedy. He sits in on Calvin’s “master class” on his five rules for prayer. He listens to the similar and distinct ways all three pastors prayed the Lord’s Prayer. All of this makes the book a treasury of help from ancient prayer closets.

Praying Well Begins with Listening

For Keller, perhaps the single most important key to prayer is its marriage to the word of God. So many of the dangers of prayer are curbed (or eliminated altogether), and so many of the rewards are unlocked and unleashed, when we pray over and through and from what God has said.

Your prayer must be firmly connected to and grounded in your reading of the Word. This wedding of Bible and prayer anchors your life down in the real God. (56)

Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality. (62)

Keller doesn’t set the Bible aside to try and have a better prayer life, as if an overemphasis on Scripture somehow undermines our prayers. No, the greater danger is that we can actually lose the true God in our rhythms of prayer. “If left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn’t exist,” he warns. “Without prayer that answers the God of the Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves” (62).

After establishing the importance of Scripture early in the book, he circles back and does a whole chapter on how the practice of meditation serves prayer, letting John Owen teach us how to work the truth out with our minds and then work it in to our hearts.

Prayer Closets for Beginners

Keller was a theologian and an apologist, but he was just as much a pastor. And because he was a pastor of people who really struggled to pray, he wasn’t content to merely share ideas and principles. He wanted to offer real practical help on the how.

I wrote this book because, though many great books on prayer have been written, most either go into the theology of prayer, or they go into the practice of prayer, or they troubleshoot. I didn’t have one book I could give people that basically covered all the bases: a biblical view of prayer, the theology of prayer, and some methods of prayer. I didn’t have a good first book to give somebody. (“Prayers That Don’t Work”)

So, after developing a theology of prayer in Scripture and exploring what history teaches us about prayer, he offers ways to actually practice and experience what he’s describing.

For instance, he devotes a chapter to praying the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13). That may sound rather straightforward and elementary at first (you may have started praying that prayer even before you were in first grade), but Keller follows Luther in learning to use the prayer less for its exact words and more as a pattern to follow and expand in our own words (93–94). He found that this practice limits the distracting thoughts that inevitably come when we pray. It also teaches us to reach beyond the immediate needs or burdens that so often dictate where we focus in prayer.

Later in the book, he shares how regularly praying the Psalms transforms a prayer life.

Immersing ourselves in the Psalms and turning them into prayers teaches our hearts the “grammar” of prayer and gives us the most formative instruction in how to pray in accord with God’s character and will. (255)

He shares that he would read psalms in the morning and evening and then pray, sometimes praying the actual words of the psalm and other times praying in his own words. Following the The Book of Common Prayer schedule, he would work through all 150 psalms each month. Over time, his prayers (and soul) were slowly and deeply conformed to “the Bible’s prayer book.”

Along with the Lord’s Prayer and the Psalms, he collects and shares a number of other extremely practical paradigms and guides for daily prayer, ranging from short and simple models to longer and more involved ones.

Entering the Happiness of God

Having read a number of Keller’s books, perhaps the most surprising character in this particular book was joy. In fact, rereading the book made me wonder if his battle with cancer freshly awakened him not only to prayer, but also to the prominent place of happiness in the Christian life. Very early, he charts the course:

The Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us that our purpose is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.” In this famous sentence we see reflected both kingdom-prayer and communion-prayer. Those two things — glorifying God and enjoying God — do not always coincide in this life, but in the end they must be the same thing. We may pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, but if we don’t enjoy God supremely with all our being, we are not truly honoring him as Lord. (4)

For as sweet as the camaraderie was between Tim Keller and John Piper over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard them sing with such harmony. According to Keller, the prayers “Hallowed be your name” and “O God, my soul thirsts for you” are not unrelated or at odds, but at their deepest root, the same.

And why would our enjoying God glorify him? Because he is Happiness — Father, Son, and Spirit infinitely and eternally delighting in one another. “We can see why a triune God would call us to converse with him, to know and relate to him. It is because he wants to share the joy he has. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God himself” (68). From his knees, Keller found the only thing big enough, full enough, and intense enough to satisfy the human soul: joy in the happy God.

And now that joy is full. On May 19, 2023, Tim Keller went from prayer to sight. In the sovereign hands of a loving Father, cancer had given him prayer, and now cancer has given him Christ. He has truly entered the happiness of God. Oh, to read a sixteenth chapter from heaven.