This article is part 13 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12).

The orthodox party of Nicea prevailed for less than a decade. Challenges to the formula of Nicea soon began to multiply. For a brief period, Arianism was made the received doctrine of the empire.

Two other theological issues arose that called for closely reasoned biblical exposition. One concerned a construction of the human nature of Christ that compromised his full humanity by eliminating his human reason, human will, and thus, all true human initiative. This was propounded by Apollinarius. His zeal for the deity of Christ and the necessity of his sinlessness and incorruptibility led him to deny that Jesus had a human soul (thus no human reason, and will, and motivation).

Another issue concerned the person of the Holy Spirit. Was he a creature or was he, like the Son, of the same essence with the Father? Those who claimed the Spirit’s works were the works of a creature were known as “Fighters against the Spirit.”

The Emperor Theodosius I called a council in 381 at Constantinople in order to reaffirm the theology embraced at Nicea fifty-six years earlier and to give closure to the controversy over the Holy Spirit and the humanity of Christ. The creed of Nicea was reaffirmed with several phrases inserted to give clarity to the person and work of the Holy Spirit. We find, “by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” Also, we find, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets.” The phrase, “And the Son,” filioque in Latin, was added to the western version of this creed during the time of Charlemagne. It affirms the double procession of the Holy Spirit in eternity who is, even as love flows eternally and personally between Father and Son, “the perfect bond of unity” (Colossians 3:14).

Although the Constantinopolitan creed gave a measure of balance to affirmations concerning the persons of the Trinity and locked Arianism outside the pale of orthodoxy, it did not give a detailed synopsis of the relation of the uncreated (God) to the created (man) in the person of Christ. That the eternally generated Son of God had taken to himself real humanity was now beyond dispute. The manner of this assumption of the human nature, however, and the appropriate words to use in asserting this truth still seemed to elude a clear, biblically defensible, theologically sustained definition.

Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, in response to a Mary-cult developing in his diocese, found it absurd to use the word theotokos, God-bearer, for Mary. He preferred the term christotokos, Christ-bearer. While firmly sustaining both the human and the divine, conscientiously resisting the tendency to fuse, and lose, the human into the divine nature, Nestorius was perceived as erring on the other side. It seemed that he maintained such an individuality in the human nature that he treated the nature as a person. He viewed the union as one only of undivided moral purpose, or a divine indwelling of the man born of Mary. His was a kind of high adoptionist Christology.

Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, kept the pressure on Nestorius insisting that he anathematize the positions attributed to him. To mke his position clear, Nestorious should affirm, “If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore the holy Virgin is theotokos—for she bore in the flesh the Word of God become flesh—let him be anathema.”[1] Unable to consent to this anathema, Nestorius was exiled after the Council of Ephesus (431).

Cyril’s language, however, gave rise to a group known as Monophysite (one nature) and Monothelite (one will). They contended that Christ, because of infinite greatness of his deity, had only one nature. The humanity was like a drop of honey absorbed into the ocean. In this vein of thought, Eutychus declared, “I confess that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but after the union I confess one nature.” This formula was resisted by Flavian, the bishop of Constantinople, and was condemned by a council in 448 that used the terminology of “two natures,” obviously protecting the full human nature, existing in the one Christ.

Eutyches, representing this as Nestorianism, with support from Theodosius II, called a synod in 449 composed of those that revered him and his theological instincts to approve his formula. Flavian’s attempt to attend this council and provide a reasoned objection resulted in his being grossly manhandled so that he died.  This synod soon was termed the Latrocinium, Robbers’ Synod, by those that opposed Eutyches.

During the time of this theological, and sometimes physical, punch and counter-punch, the bishop of Rome, Leo, appealed to by both parties in this dispute, gathered enough information about what was at stake to weigh in with unusual clarity and vigor. Before Flavian’s ultimate conflict, Leo wrote him concerning his view of the issue. This letter, so profoundly practical and biblical in its content, has gained a just commendation through the centuries. Known as Leo’s Tome, its argument virtually sealed the issue concerning the relationship of Jesus’ human nature and his divine nature in the single person.  When a new council was called in 451 at Chalcedon to revisit the Eutychian problem, Leo’s letter was read. Many of those in attendance greeted its reading with the words, “Peter has spoken.” This should not prejudice those who reject the papal primacy or the Petrine succession of Rome against the power of the reasoning and synthesis of biblical truths present in this document. Edward Hardy wrote, “It is a fine specimen of the straightforwardness and clarity of the Latin mind—as also of the Western approach to the mysteries of Christianity from the facts of faith rather than the speculations of philosophy.”[2]

Leo’s reasoning, in fact, from the commonly accepted confession of Christians and the biblical material concerning the incarnation of the Son of God is tightly constructed and profound.  The argument is Bible-centered and doctrinally coherent.

Leo said that if Eutyches “was not willing, for the sake of obtaining the light of intelligence, to make laborious search through the whole extent of the Holy Scriptures,” at least he should have learned from the common confession, particularly the implications of its words, “His only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary.” Failing that, he should submit to the implications of the gospel descriptions of the person and work of Christ which show that “in the entire and perfect nature of very Man was born very God, whole in what was his, whole in what was ours” except for the corruption of sin.

As for the formula set forth by Eutyches (“out of two natures into one”), Leo indicated the greatest disdain. “I am astonished,” he told Flavian, “that so absurd and perverse a profession as this of his was not rebuked by a censure on the part of any of his judges [in 448], and that an utterance extremely foolish and extremely blasphemous was passed over.” Leo noted that it was just as impious to say that the only-begotten Son of God “was of two natures before the incarnation as it is shocking to affirm that, since the Word became flesh, there has been in him one nature only.”[3] How could two natures exist in the Son of God prior to the incarnation? Also, how could one that was not fully man as a result of the incarnation ever reclaim for humanity the moral image of the divine and the warrant to eternal life?

A method of biblical citation emerges in Leo’s letter that helps the student of the Bible with an important principle of interpretation. His synthesis of texts employs a theological observation called the communicatio idiomatum—the fellowship of peculiar properties. This means that many texts in the Bible which would otherwise be confusing are perfectly clear when one sees the integrity of two natures in one person, Jesus Christ. Often Scripture asserts an action or attribute of one nature that, strictly speaking, holds true only for the other nature. Such is Paul’s statement in Acts 20:28, “to feed the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.” God does not have blood, but the person who purchased the church by his death, did have blood and also was God. The same inference we draw from the words of Jesus in John 3: 13: “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.” Jesus had never been in heaven as Son of man, but as Son of Man he is the same person that as Son of God had come down from heaven. Even at that moment, as he spoke, as Son of Man united in person with the eternally generated Son of God, he was in heaven. Though he stood before Nicodemus, isolated in time and space by his body and by every property of his humanity even as Nicodemus himself was, unlike Nicodemus, he also resided in heaven. As he spoke, his eternal generation from the Father, an eternal and immutable property of his personhood as Son of God, explained the meaning of “which is in heaven.” The communicatio idiomatum gives the key to a proper grasp of such a text.

Sometimes Scripture will indicate a condition of the whole person that is true only of one nature (“Before Abraham was, I am” John 8:58). These kinds of texts are the seed bed for the theology of two natures in one person, and, once established, the theology becomes a principle of interpretation for a large number of texts. For example, consider the following used by Leo himself in the famous “Tome” in which he argued and illustrated that in this single person “the lowliness of man and the loftiness of Godhead meet together.” Though it does not belong to the same nature, it is true of the same person, to say, “I and the Father are one” and to say, “The Father is greater than I.” We find clearly stated the same mysterious truth in Paul’s statement, “For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory?” When Jesus asked who he the Son of Man was, why does he commend the answer, ”Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God?”

Leo also kept pressing that the ontology of the person of Christ served the interests of the salvation of sinners, “because one of these truths, accepted without the other, would not profit unto salvation.” It would be equally wrong, as well as dangerous to the soul, to believe the Lord Jesus to be God only and not man, or man only and not God.

At the time of the Olivet discourse, Jesus made the puzzling affirmation, “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). Jesus, speaking by the Spirit and in his humanity, had been isolated from that knowledge. He could state with perfect accuracy and verity that, in his perfect manhood, the Son did not know what the Father had decreed concerning the coming in glory of the triumphant, risen, ascended, redeeming Son of Man (37, 39, 44). In his humanity, Jesus increased in wisdom. His knowledge and his perfect ability to apply it continually increased throughout his life as the man who was being perfected, that is, brought by degrees to a full and immutable righteousness (Luke 2:52; Hebrews 5:8). This event was hidden even from him, in that peculiar capacity, at this time.

In his commentary on Matthew, John A Broadus observed: “If there was to be a real incarnation of the Eternal Word, then the body he took must be a real body, and the mind a real mind. How his divine nature could be omniscient, and his human mind limited in knowledge, both being united in one person, is part of the mystery of the Incarnation, which we need not expect to solve.”

If Christ in his perfection of moral rectitude and full commitment to all that the Father willed, had this event hidden from him at this time, and yet trusted fully even though he would go through the torturous propitiatory death, how willingly and joyfully should we submit to the mystery of our future with absolute trust in a faithful creator and Father.  In this way, we “Remember Jesus Christ” and emulate his submission to and trust in the Father’s wisdom and will.

[1] Hardy, Christology of the Later Fathers, 353

[2] Hardy, 359.

[3] Hardy, 359-370.

This article is part 13 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ.

Join us at the 2024 National Founders Conference on January 18-20 as we consider what it means to “Remember Jesus Christ” under the teaching of Tom Ascol, Joel Beeke, Costi Hinn, Phil Johnson, Conrad Mbewe and Travis Allen.

In Romans 6:1-14, the Apostle Paul gives Christians, among other things, one of the purposes of believer’s baptism. This blessed ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ is a beautiful picture worth a thousand words! While much ink has been spilled over the mode, subject, and purpose of baptism, let me give you three simple, yet profound pictures, that this ordinance gives the church. 

First, it displays for us an:

Overwhelming Covenant  

In Romans 6:14 we see that believers are not under law, but grace. Consider those two words there: “law” and “grace.” 

The Apostle Paul is one of my favorite Baptists. And what we see him articulating for us here are the two great covenants of the Bible: The covenant of works and the covenant of grace. 

This is how your Bible is divided. Old Testament and New Testament. This comes from the Latin Testamentum and just means covenant. Literally your Bible is divided into two sections known as Old Covenant and New Covenant, or, Law and Grace. 

Now, this doesn’t mean there’s only law in the Old Testament and only Grace in the New Testament. Of course, that’s not true at all. But what it does help us see is that these two covenants, Law and Grace, help set the framework for the whole Bible. 

In fact, I would go so far as to say that without understanding these covenants well, we do not read our Bibles well. Listen to how Spurgeon put it: 

The doctrine of the divine covenant lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well understands the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes which men make concerning the doctrines of Scripture are based upon fundamental errors with regard to the covenants of law and of grace.

The Covenant of Works

So, in our text we have law and grace. All persons born in Adam are born into law, that is, under a covenant of works, a covenant that has been broken because of Adam’s sin (cf. Romans 5:12).

Adam is what we call our legal representative. He is the federal head of the human race. And in Adam, all die. We are born under a broken covenant of works and held guilty due to Adam’s sin all the while the moment we are able we choose volitionally to sin and rebel against our holy God.

It is our nature to sin and run away from God. We have nothing left within us willing or able to do any spiritual good before God. 

Being under the law as a covenant of works, leaves us in a hopeless condition. It shows us the perfection God demands but only moves us to rebel (see Romans 7) and is unable to remedy our situation. What then is left for us to do? Well, all we can do, and all we want to do, only heaps up more condemnation. 

The Covenant of Grace

This brings us to the overwhelming covenant and by that, I mean the covenant of grace. 

In eternity past the triune Godhead agreed to save an unworthy people for His own glory. This agreement theologians call the covenant of redemption. But this is enacted in time by the promise of grace. We see this in Gen. 3:15 after the Fall: God will send the seed of the woman to crush the serpent’s head.

That same language is used again in Genesis 12: This Redeemer will be the Seed of Abraham and then later the offspring of David. 

These promises, and so many more, point us forward to the covenant of grace which is inaugurated in Christ – Jesus is the One promised of old. He is the one in time, born of the Virgin Mary, fulfilling all righteousness in His life, dying the death of covenant breakers, bearing the wrath of God for His ppl, and rising again in victory over death, hell, and the grave.

The covenant of grace says there is nothing you can do in and of yourself to reconcile you to God. Not your going to church or taking the Lord’s Supper or reciting the Bible or prayers or creeds. 

In and of yourself is only unrighteousness and sin. 

But the Lord Jesus came. He completed the work. Where Adam failed, where Israel failed, where you have failed, He fulfilled all righteousness. He substituted Himself in our place. He bore the wrath of breaking God’s law upon the wooden cross. He rose again in triumph. 

And God’s grace brings us out from under the law and places us within the new covenant, the covenant of grace (Romans 6:14).

Members of the Covenant 

Under the law, the sign of the covenant of works was circumcision. It was a reminder that those who did not keep the whole law would be cut off from God. That is, the children of Abraham were not part of the covenant of grace unless, they, by faith, looked to the coming Messiah. 

The true people of God have always and only been believers. It is only those who by grace alone place their faith alone in Christ alone who are God’s true Israel (cf. Rom. 9:6, Gal. 6:16). Someone’s physical birth or ethnicity does not bring them into the New Covenant. 

In Romans 4:16 we see that Abraham is the true father of only those of faith, whether Jew or Gentile. Only those of faith are the ppl of God. Only those of faith are brought into the New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace.

Those in the Covenant of Grace are no longer under Adam as their representative. Rather, Christ represents them! They have died in Christ and now live again in Him having His righteousness credited to their account by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. 

And, so, what is the sign, then, of this new covenant? This overwhelming covenant of grace? It is believers Baptism as Paul lays our in Romans 6:3-4.

This, of course, teaches us that Biblical Baptism is not for unbelievers. It is not for infants. It is only for those who have been brought into the New Covenant, dying to sin and self and rising again to newness of life as typified in Baptism which serves as a sign for God’s glorious grace upon a person’s life. 

Baptism is a picture worth 1,000 words! Baptism signifies, it is a picture of, our union with Christ. It shows forth our newness of life. It publicly identifies us with the death and resurrection of Christ.  Baptism does not perform these things. It does not create within us a new heart. It does not bring us into union with Christ. 

Rather, it displays on the outside what God, in His sovereign grace, has already performed on the inside. 

This is why we baptize by immersion (cf. Romans 6:3-4). Now, to say we “baptize by immersion” is like saying we “drink a drink.” Baptism and immersion are the same word. Baptism is really a made-up word in the sense that it’s just transliterated, brought straight over form Greek to English.

You can read John Dagg’s work on this Greek word but let me give you one quote from 17th Century Baptist, Henry Lawrence (1600-1664) who says: “the word Βαπτίζω signifies properly…to drowne, or sinke in the water, to dip, to overwhelme…”

You cannot signify the death and resurrection of Christ or the new believer by sprinkling water or by pouring water. Baptists baptize. That is, we immerse believers’ whole body down into the water and back up again. 

Baptism, then, reminds us of an Overwhelming Covenant. 

2ndly, it is a picture of an:

Obligatory Commitment

I love this quote from Sam Renihan: “Baptism is…a two-way declaration. On the one hand, it is God’s visible promise that all who are in His Son are new creations by virtue of their union with Christ in His death and resurrection. And on the other hand, it is the individual’s profession of faith in those very promises.”

Romans 6 shows us that by committing to the ordinance of baptism the new Christian is publicly declaring his or her death to sin and new life in Christ. He or she is declaring a commitment to follow Christ no matter the cost. The old man or woman has passed away and the new one has come being created anew in Christ Jesus by God’s grace. 

In Baptism we have symbolized taking off the old man and putting on the new and now it is our fight every day to continue to do this. Every day we continue to mortify the deeds of the flesh. We continue to look to Christ and seek to walk in newness of life. 

And this really is Paul’s argument in Romans 6:1-4. What he is encouraging the Roman Christians with is to, essentially, remember their baptism as a way of fighting sin in the present. 

Let me put it to you this way: In many places in America there are people who profess to be Christians. And one of the reasons many say they are Christians is because they have been baptized.

Thus, they look to their baptism as a trophy rather than as a flag. Let me illustrate it like this: In the movie the Patriot, Benjamin Martin’s oldest son, Gabriel Martin, is continually sewing an American Flag . And even in the midst of despair and defeat, that flag is a symbol of what they are fighting for in the American Revolution.

And looking at the flag is what sort of turns the battle at the end of the movie. 

Well, in a similar way, we look to our Baptism to remember what we are fighting for. We have died to sin and risen with Christ! This fight is worth it. Keep pressing on. You are dead to sin and alive in Christ. Christ is King. He is King of your Life. Keep up the fight.

If you look at Baptism as a trophy you just say, “Well, I’ve got my ticket into heaven and it doesn’t matter how I live.” If you remembering your baptism means you just live a life of unchecked rebellion and sin but you’re clinging to your baptism as your hope, you are foolish. This is not the purpose of Baptism. 

But for those who have been born again, our Baptism serves as a reminder of who we are so that we can continue our growth in the Lord Jesus Christ. Being in the New Covenant does not produce passivity or carelessness but commitment to holiness. 

Baptism is an obligatory commitment. It is our commitment before others that we are following Christ no matter the cost. He is worthy!

And by obligatory, I mean what my friend Jeffrey Johnson writes:

Although baptism is not essential to salvation, it is highly unlikely that a person has been truly born again without an eager desire to follow the Lord in this first command that God gives the new Christian. Baptism is a public confession of Christ that evidences to the church and the world that there has been a radical transformation within. Baptism is also a visible sermon. It demonstrates a spiritual reality of one’s death to sin and resurrection to the newness of life in Christ Jesus.

So, Baptism reminds us of an overwhelming covenant. It is an obligatory commitment. And finally, Baptism is an: 

Open Commemoration

In Romans 6:3 Paul uses the phrase “all of us”. Paul is able to speak to the Church at Rome with the common understanding that Baptism was ordinary part of the Christian life. 

That is, “all of us” were baptized. All of who? All Christians. Not that Baptism is what “makes” a Christian, but Baptism is what, in essence, publicly commemorates one as a Christian. 

This is why Baptism is an ordinance of the local church. The local church has the keys of the kingdom from Christ Her Lord (cf. Matthew 16:19). And it is her duty to open the door to Baptism as it were for all who repent and believe the gospel.

So, when a local church baptizes someone, it is saying, in essence, “We receive this man or woman as a brother or sister in Christ.” In Baptism, the church is publicly declaring a person as a Christian. 

Thus, in Baptism, the local church is committing to love this man or woman as a brother or sister in Christ, to watch over him or her in the Lord, to hold this person accountable in the Lord, and to humbly have him or her watch over us and hold fellow church members accountable as well. 

Baptism is an open commemoration. It is not to be done in a secret closet unbeknownst to anyone else. It is not to be done on a whim in someone’s backyard separated from the local church. 

Baptism is a local church ordinance where we perform this great event in the midst of the gathered church. That may be at a lake or in a river or even in a pool, but the point is, it’s properly done when the local church is gathered under the leadership of her pastors. 

Fred Malone reminds us, 

Away with the individualistic ecclesiology plaguing America which minimizes baptism and church membership, leaving Christians the freedom to float around without feeling responsible to a pastor or a church. Such an attitude feeds the antinomian spirit we see growing today. Yet, the whole teaching of the NT is that Christians need the ministry of a committed body of believers (church membership) which baptism calls them to. Church membership is required after baptism and believer’s baptism is required for church membership.

Thus, Baptism is an open commemoration. It is a public ordinance of the church whereby those baptized as well as the local church celebrate Christ together even as they mutually pledge themselves to one another in grace.

Fred Malone also states: “Baptism is the outward sign of entrance into the New Covenant by the inward circumcision of the heart, evidenced by one’s confession of faith in Christ.”

This reminds us that Baptism is a picture worth a thousand words. It cannot save in the sense of effecting regeneration or faith or justification or any such thing. Rather, it points us to Christ and is a picture of new life in Him (cf. Rom. 6:1-4). 

In The Devil’s Dictionary, the satirist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) defined dishonesty as “an important element of commercial success” (p. 85).
While this definition is cynical, it’s not wrong. One can only wonder what Bierce would say if he witnessed the state of today’s church.
You don’t have to look far to see dishonesty in the church. In the US, concert music and TED-style talks take the place of reverent worship and faithful biblical exposition. Across the globe, roaming “apostles” skip from one downtrodden, developing nation to another, lining their pockets with each staged signs-and-wonders crusade.
But the problem isn’t only external—it’s not just the bad guys and heretics out there. The problem lurks in our own hearts.
It’s the small-town pastor who, rubbing shoulders with bigshots at a conference, puffs his chest and rounds up when asked about his church’s weekly attendance. It’s the nonprofit that parrots the world’s marketing lingo of inclusiveness and “justice” to hit that Gen Z target audience. It’s the overseas worker tempted to cook the books on the “decisions for Christ” column in the annual report—after all, who would know?
Few of us are above these temptations. We must diagnose the problem. But we must also take great care to not misdiagnose it.
One common diagnosis is pragmatism.
We are too utilitarian—we do what we think works. We tweak our language to avoid gospel offense. We offer entertainment because it seems to grow the church, reasoning that more bodies in pews means more changed lives. We focus on results more than faithfulness.
Worldly, pragmatic methods in ministry are simply rotten fruit on a sickly vine.
But a missionary friend of mine recently challenged this diagnosis. “Pragmatism isn’t the problem,” he told me. He has seen similar problems firsthand in the Islamic world, where pioneering missionaries in risky countries, backed by enthusiastic supporters, face daily temptation to exaggerate the fruit of their efforts.
I asked him what he thinks the real problem is. “Fear of man,” he replied.
He pinpointed the root issue as the desire to be well-regarded. Like the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day, those in ministry who justify dishonesty and compromise the Lord’s work love “the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (John 12:43). Worldly, pragmatic methods in ministry are simply rotten fruit on a sickly vine.
If my missionary friend is right, then our ailment goes far deeper than our North American obsession with results. Idolatry of human approval affects all of us to some extent—even we, who oppose using shrewd, worldly marketing tactics to grow our ministries. At times, we all prefer an “atta boy” or “atta girl” to “well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:23). We covet favor with the guild or with teammates above the unpopularity produced by fidelity to Scripture.
Let’s assume my friend is right. What do we do?
In C.S. Lewis’ lecture “The Inner Ring,” addressed to a group of young, up-and-comers, he expounds the danger of our lust to belong to an elite in-group:
“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.”
It is one thing for us to reject worldly pragmatism in ministry. But we should not commend ourselves unless we also wage war against our own lust to belong to the in-group—whether to the pragmatic mainstreamorto its ranks of critics.
For the missionary, pastor, or church planter, faithfulness in ministry may mean displeasing a colleague, a mentor, or a training group that embraces more pragmatic methods. If our solitary aim is to please him who enlisted us (2 Tim. 2:4), we will do well.
Faithfulness is its own reward.
May we fear God more than men.

This article was originally published here