Audio Transcript

How do I find my identity, my self-identity? Directly or indirectly, we get that essential question all the time in our inbox. Take, for example, this email from Nick, a listener and a former collegiate volleyball player. He gave his life to competitive sports in college, and he discovered, as every athlete eventually does, that his career would end. And it ended sooner than Nick expected. When it did, he fell into a season of darkness. He had failed to achieve his athletic goals. And he hadn’t prepared himself for the abrupt end — unprepared to be separated from the competition, from his school, and from his teammates. So how does a serious athlete like Nick find his self-identity now?

Well, self-identity was a theme in John Piper’s very first message in his famous sermon series on the book of Romans. Many of you know about that sermon series. Piper preached through all of Romans in 225 sermons over the course of eight years and eight months, spanning from the spring of 1998 to the end of 2006. All 225 of those rich messages are collected under the series title “The Greatest Letter Ever Written.” As we recently heard, Romans is a key to his own self-identity. And in sermon number one of his series, he started with verse 1 of Romans. That’s all he covered in the first sermon, to cover the apostle Paul’s identity and, from it, our own identity. Here he is, in 1998, reading that first verse.

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1). Now, there are three phrases in Romans 1:1. We’ll look at them. And I want you to see the man, I want you to see his letter, and I want you to see his God. And just by way of application right off the bat, sometimes you read a verse, and even before the exposition comes, it says a word to you so personally that it sort of skips over the exposition.

Whose Are You?

And I just have a feeling that the word that just blurts itself out here isn’t who Paul is — it’s whose Paul is. You see that in those three phrases? “Servant,” bought by another; a “called one,” called by another; a “set-apart one,” set apart by another. There’s somebody else in this verse, right? It looks like Paul is what this verse is about. This verse is not about Paul. The one who bought him, the one who called him, the one who set him apart — there’s somebody lurking behind this man.

“The big question in life is not ‘Who am I?’ The big question in life is ‘Whose am I?’”

The big questions in life are not “Who am I?” The big question in life is “Whose am I?” You have got to answer that question. Whose are you? Whose are you? That’s the issue. In the twentieth century, we get all bent out of shape about self-identity and stuff. Who am I, and my worth, and my esteem, and my value, and all that — man. When you read the Bible, the huge issue is right relationship with God and to whom you belong, whose you are. So let that be the question hanging over this verse.

Servant of Christ

Phrase number one is “a servant of Christ Jesus.” Now, we religious types, who read the Bible for dozens of years, we’ve got to realize what a shocking phrase that is. We’ve got to decide here if this man’s crazy. Jesus Christ, according to Tacitus, a secular witness — as well as all the Christian witnesses, as well as Josephus — said, “Jesus died 25 years ago.” He’s dead. He’s not master of anybody. And Paul says, “He’s my master, and he’s alive. I am a slave to the living Christ Jesus.”

So you’ve got to decide now, at the beginning of this book, Are these the rantings of a madman who thinks people die and then pop up out of the grave three days later and then become masters of people? Is he a crazy man? Or did, possibly, that happen and that’s reality — and all the people in the world who ignore that or mock that are unreality? You have got to decide this. These are huge issues. Is he crazy to call himself the bondservant of Christ Jesus?

“You are owned by virtue of creation, and you are owned by virtue of purchase. You are doubly not your own.”

What does that mean to be the bondservant? It means he’s bought by Jesus, owned by Jesus, ruled by Jesus. I’ll show you where I get that. In 1 Corinthians 7:23, he says, “You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.” So to be a slave of somebody is to have been bought by them. So he calls himself a slave or a bondservant of Christ, which means Christ bought him, and that’s what he says. “Christ bought me. And since he bought me, he owns me.” If you’re a Christian this morning, you are doubly owned by God. You are owned by virtue of creation, and you are owned by virtue of purchase. You are doubly not your own, doubly his. He owns you.

He can do with you as he pleases, which leads us to the third thing it means — namely, that he rules you, and that what you want to do is please him. Where do I get that? Galatians 1:10: “Am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,” Paul says, “I would not be a servant of Christ.” If I were trying to please men, I would not be the bondservant of Christ. But I am the bondservant of Christ; therefore, I don’t give a rip about pleasing men unless my pleasing them might lead them to please my Master, which is what Romans 15 says. “Let us seek to please one another for edification, that we might glorify God through bringing others to him” (see Romans 15:1–7).

No Second-Handers

But what’s driving this man is a radical Christ-orientation because Christ bought him, owns him, and rules him now, and all of his thinking is, “How can I please him? How can I honor him? How can I magnify him?” And what we want to create at Bethlehem — and I know that the vast majority of you are with me on this — is a church of people who are radically oriented on pleasing Christ, honoring Christ, magnifying Christ, and letting the chips fall where they will instead of being what most people are — namely, second-handers. (I get that phrase from Ayn Rand, who wrote the novel Atlas Shrugged, who despised second-handers.)

That is people who have no vision and values of their own for which they live triumphantly and are always looking over their shoulder, wondering, “I wonder what they think about this,” and “I wonder what they think about this,” and “I wonder what they think about this.” And they live their whole lives second-handedly, always trying to get into other people’s good graces and be liked and stroked and praised and complimented and paid. It’s a horrible way to live. And Paul said, “I am owned by another. I have been bought, and I am ruled, and I have one person to please: Christ. And he has revealed his word in me, and that’s my life.” Let’s be like that.

Audio Transcript

One of the great anxieties that parents face is the fear of what our own sins could do to corrupt our kids. It can be a paralyzing anxiety, one that has come up on the podcast in many different forms.

It’s the fear of those who believe in God’s judgment on generational sins, sins of the past being visited on future generations. More commonly, it’s the fear of young men and women born out of wedlock, or born into dysfunctional homes, who wonder if their past dooms their future family to a similar broken fate. It’s the fear of Christian parents of prodigals who are left wondering what they did to mess up their children so badly. It’s the fear of young men and women awakened to the potency of sin in their own hearts, and afraid to even have children because of what their own sins could do to corrupt those future kids. In each of these scenarios, we find the same haunting question lurking behind it all: Did my sin — or will my sin — ruin my child? In our new APJ book, you can see these scenarios on pages 192–93.

And the same question echoes in this heartbreaking email from a broken dad. He writes in anonymously. “Pastor John, my wife and I have four sons, ranging from twenty to eight. We recently found out our twenty- and fifteen-year-olds both claim to suffer from so-called ‘gender dysphoria.’ The twenty-year-old is walking with the Lord and knows it’s wrong, fighting his temptations, and trying to dwell in God for strength, and attends a solid, Bible-believing church. But he’s in college two hours away, and we are still worried for him.

“Our fifteen-year-old is not a believer. He’s in a public school, and we are now looking to move him to private Christian school and will continue to help support him. But he has been cold and not receptive. We have talked to our pastors and asked for prayer, but we feel so broken and so alone and so helpless in this season. What do we do to fight against the despair we face every day as failed parents? How did we fail them? Please help us, Pastor John. We are so torn and heartbroken.”

As I have thought and prayed more than usual about this question and this situation — which, of course, is multiplied ten thousandfold for Christian parents across the world — there are ten suggestions that I have for parents to consider (and I just say consider) when a child moves away from obedience to Jesus. It might be completely away; it might be partially away — whatever form it takes.

Here they are.

1. Grieve with hope.

Grieve deeply but not despairingly. Grieve while holding fast to the sovereign goodness and wisdom of God. Be like Job, who fell on the ground, tore his robe, shaved his head, no doubt wept his eyes out at the loss of his children, and said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). So, grieve deeply but not despairingly.

2. Look to the God of the impossible.

Do not assume while your child lives that he will not return to the path of obedience. “What is impossible with man” — and it surely seems impossible at times — “is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Look to the God of the impossible.

3. Do not assume you’re decisively at fault.

Do not assume that your imperfections as a parent were decisive in causing this disobedience in your child. Don’t assume that. Read Ezekiel 18:1–32. I’ll sum it up:

Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die. If a righteous father begets a son who is violent, a shedder of blood, though the father himself has done none of these things, that son shall surely die. His blood shall be upon himself. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father for the iniquity of the son.

The father shall not suffer, the mother shall not suffer, for the iniquity of the son. In other words, we cannot draw a straight line from our own parenting to our children’s sin or righteousness. The refrain running through the Bible is that failing parents can have good children, and good parents can have failing children. So, repent of all remembered sin, but don’t assume that was the decisive cause of your child’s disobedience.

4. Love your children on God’s terms.

Resolve to love your children on God’s terms, not the world’s terms. That is, love them with a readiness to sacrifice your life while standing for what God calls right and what God calls true, not what the world calls right and true. The effort to be loving by forsaking God’s way of truth and righteousness — which many are trying to do today — is to fail in love. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” Jesus said in John 8:32. God’s truth is the path to love.

5. Speak truth to your child.

Whether in person or in letters or emails, speak truth to your child. Tell them what you believe, why you believe it, and why you believe it’s the path of love. Do not withdraw into self-pity or anger. Lean in with truth; speak to them. Once this is done, then wait. Don’t nag — don’t harass — but be sure you have spoken to them the fullness of the truth you believe is the path of love.

6. Communicate your love.

Communicate your love — the love that is willing and ready to go anywhere, do anything, at any cost to your life for the sake of the life of your children. Now, they may think that the truth you embrace cannot be loving because it does not affirm them in their sin, but they know in their heart when you are ready to give your life for them and that you are not selfish. They know. Your commitment to the Bible has made you ready to die for the good of others, especially your children. Communicate that readiness to them.

7. Pray without ceasing.

Pray without ceasing in the confidence that God is sovereign and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. And gather some friends — whether in person or in other ways — and join in prayer for each other’s children. Trust God as you pray that he will give good things to those who ask him, because that’s what it says in Matthew 7:11: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Expect him to give good things as you pray.

8. Discern how often to address the issue.

Measure — with prayerful, Bible-saturated wisdom — how often to address the issue with your child. I said a moment ago, “Don’t nag — don’t harass.” Some will be utterly closed to any communication. That’s tragic, but it’s real. So, rarely intrude where you have been forbidden. (Rarely — I didn’t say never.) Others will be more open. God will give you discernment. That’s what I trust. God will give you discernment — “wisdom from above,” as James calls it in James 3:17.

Sometimes you will just send a note of affection. “I love you.” That’s the text: “I love you.” Sometimes notes mentioning something precious about the Lord Jesus that you just read in your devotions. Maybe, “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him” (Psalm 103:13 NKJV). You just say that. Sometimes the note will simply say, “Just thinking about you today.” That’s all.

9. Make the central gospel plain.

Periodically, make the simple, central gospel plain to the distant prodigal — the child who’s moving away. Make the central gospel plain. In other words, from time to time — God will make it plain how often (Once a year? Once every six months?) — remind them there’s always a way out, a way home to God and to you, because there may come a point when they want out.

They want out of their disobedience, but Satan is blinding them to any hope that it could happen, telling them there’s no way out; there’s no way back. And they may need help remembering what they once knew so well and has become cloudy. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

10. Press on with indomitable joy.

Press on with your ordinary life with brokenhearted but indomitable joy, and deny Satan the triumph of paralyzing you in your path of righteousness because of your child’s path of unrighteousness. Satan would love to take out two people with one bullet. Deny him that.

Yes, your child needs to see that you are not blithely indifferent to his disobedience. But just as important, he needs to see that Jesus is your supreme treasure and that the solar system of your life does not revolve around your child. He is not the sun in your solar system. Christ is. He doesn’t need you falling apart, retreating in self-pity, pouting. That’s not helpful. He needs you weak and triumphant in Christ.

Tidal Wave of Grace

Now, there are so many other things besides these ten things to say. When I finished them, I just kept thinking of others. We have to stop. But these are the thoughts that come to me just now as I was praying and preparing for this. So, let’s pray for each other, and may the Lord bring the day when there is a tidal wave of grace that sweeps thousands of precious prodigals into the arms of their parents and of the Lord Jesus.

She allured men to many places,She who is fatally coy.Men, who knew not her embraces,Called her by the name of Joy.

I can’t recall the first moment I experienced the tease, the turmoil, the torment of Joy.

When most speak of joy — when for many years I mentioned her — they mean a smiling joy, an uplifting joy, a joy for sunny days, a pleasant satisfaction. Comforts, fulfillments, good health, gratitude fills her banquet. She bequeaths a desire to be where you already are, a wish for what you already have.

But these were mere honeybees; the hive held a Queen.

The empress Joy emerged with a supremacy that murdered her rivals. She made common stones of former jewels; ruined my appetite for other meals. When she came nearest, the world beside leaked emptiest. Beauty was her weapon; splendor, her sorcery; allure, her deadly art. She was as a goddess, divine, bewitching.

She did not bestow a quiet contentment; she provoked a desperation, carnivorous and untamed. She knifed an ache for somewhere I wasn’t — a fierce and restless angst (a madness, it at times seemed) for a blessedness I did not possess, a blessedness I did not even know truly existed. What before I never needed, I could no longer live without. My Helen of Troy, hers was the face to launch ten thousand ships.

Shadows in the Water

She had but to smile in my direction and I set sail. She became my White Whale — or rather I her Ahab.

I remember her shadow showing beneath the waters during late evenings salsa dancing at Latin restaurants. While we inhabited the music, dramatizing masculinity and femininity in rhythm, a flicker transcended the fluidity of the dance — a moment — a glimpse.

I sensed her nearness on the football field, the place men feign war. At the helm of combat, time-warped and slowed. A friendly uniform flashed down the sideline. The ball catapulted — spiraling forth with mathematic eloquence, returning from its flight as a falcon diving at its prey. The crowd exhaled a roar — she, for a moment, smiled.

I heard her ancient voice through doorways into other worlds. In stories bigger than men, valor glistened from other lands, evil threatened, a mission dawned worth dying for. Beyond the make-believe worlds of magic and orcs and elves, beyond the battles and the wars and the triumph and restoration — she summoned. But to where?

At other moments, she would peer at me from the other side of a sunset, hike with me through kingdoms of green, smite me with her strings during beautiful symphonies, chuckle with delight through a child’s laughter, or converse intimately while on an evening’s date — but these were never her. “Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance” (The Weight of Glory, 41). She but left her perfume upon the doorknob.

Yet, for a moment, as fragile as a whisper, everything seemed right; a ray pierced into the clouded world. But the blaze soon extinguished; the snowflake melted; the credits rolled; the song fell with the heavy thud of silence. These Moseses brought me only to the borderland; quitted me on the wrong side of the Jordan. She invited me up to glance at the land flowing with milk and honey — but not to taste.

As quickly as the thought surfaced — Now this, at last, is what life is all about — she vanished. Her sun set violently. She teased and tore through my sky only to pass the scepter again to the lesser lights, leaving behind a dark and colder night.

Seasick

She led me there and back again,Old age and blisters all I found.The Siren of the souls of men,Forsook me to the ocean’s ground.

Years fled away in this fashion. She would neither give herself to me nor let me die politely with earthly pleasures. Upon these waters I learned the throb, the pain, the menacing loveliness of this Joy unheld, uncaught. I spent years searching at sea, and yet she drew no closer than Tomorrow. Her silhouette draped over creation, estranging me to my own world. Was this angel from heaven or from hell?

“Vanity,” a voice sighed from a farther and sadder sea. He too searched this world for her. “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself’” (Ecclesiastes 2:1). He built massive houses, planted gardens. He piled gold atop silver. Peerless was his crown; matchless, his wisdom. The choicest singers followed him with song. He drank nightly from a vineyard of women (Ecclesiastes 2:1–9).

“Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure,” came his testimony (Ecclesiastes 2:10). But behold, vanity! All is vanity. She did not exist under the sun, he said, tossing aside the best earth had to offer. If he could not capture her, what chance had I? Should I turn back?

“Joy itself did not reveal God to me, but she kept me groping after more than this earth.”

She defied my nets, but I couldn’t escape hers. How could I give you up, O my Ephraim? Her seal was upon my heart, her name upon my hopes. My desire for her burned as fire — a fire these many waters could not quench. Although harpoons floated, broken in the sea, she still beamed just beyond with the brightness of first introductions. In truth, I would die reaching out for her; fall slain in her shadow. Fleeting dances with her upon the open water were better than all the inlands of worldly pleasures.

Man After My Own Heart

I perplexed myself. Why strain to sail beyond the sea? Why hunt a brook whose water left me thirstier?

Because “though the sense of want is acute and even painful, yet the mere wanting is felt to be somehow a delight,” voiced another in the waters. “This desire, even when there is no hope of possible satisfaction, continues to be prized, and even to be preferred to anything else in the world, by those who have once felt it. This hunger is better than any other fullness; this poverty better than all other wealth” (The Pilgrim’s Regress, 234).

A hunger better than any other fullness; a poverty better than all other wealth. Nowhere have I found Joy better captured than in C.S. Lewis.

Joy sweetly dragooned Lewis onto the seas through a childhood memory.

Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison. (Surprised by Joy, 17)

Decades later, this Romantic voyager would recount, “In a sense, the central story of my life is about nothing else” (19).

What was Joy to Lewis?

Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with [Happiness and Pleasure]; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. (19)

A grief better than other delights, a golden unhappiness. Lewis would travel further still to translate the Longing’s secret: you were made for another world.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (Mere Christianity, 136–37)

Men hunger because food exists; they desire women because sex exists; they crave Joy and a beauty bigger than this world because another world exists.

Water at the Well’s End

God used Joy in my own story to prepare me for Jesus. Her honeyed voice cried in the wilderness, “Among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie” (John 1:26–27). The Father used this inconsolable longing to “make known to me the path of life,” to accept with David that “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). I was made for another world, another Deity.

Joy itself did not reveal God to me, but she kept me groping after more than this earth. Joy did not forgive my sins, but she kept me from being gratified with or “given over to” my sin. She did not have the words of eternal life, but she helped them resonate when I did hear them.

Heaven’s hive buzzed when Joy’s Master finally came to earth. And he visited me. He approached my shallow wells of small pursuits and said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14).

He stood up at the feast of my greatest enjoyments and cried, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37–38).

He spoke over every lust and darling sin, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that [you] may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). “Bring your hunger,” he said. “Bring your strongest and most violent appetite for the good, the true, the beautiful, the everlasting, the ever-increasing — I can meet it. You search for Joy because you think that in her you may have eternal happiness, but it is she that bears witness about me. Come to me and have Life.”

His Joy — a waterfall pouring down from forever, shattering the tiny hearts of his worshipers — is what I needed. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). As a ruined and rebellious son of Adam, I bartered away the knowledge of what I truly desired my whole life. By the Spirit’s recreating power, the long-standing hunger knelt to feast on the Bread of Life.

Old and Stubborn Ache

But if I may end with a word to fellow sailors: the old sore will still irritate — even after knowing Jesus. Lewis would write, “The old stab, the old bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life” (Surprised by Joy, 291).

Does this mean we have not found what we are looking for? A moment’s reflection bids us to ask the opposite: Why shouldn’t Joy still pierce with her sugared melancholy? Are we finally home? Are we safe upon the right side of the Jordan? Is the dwelling place of our God now with man? Is Christ before us, shining the sun into retirement?

“Time holds its breath; we hold our breath; Joy holds her breath — for him.”

No, not yet. The old ache — now unmasked — still aggresses my journeying heart, as it did Lewis’s. We still “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons” (Romans 8:23). Joy still serves salvation. We read that it was the Lord’s mercy that moved angels to seize lingering Lot and his daughters, and bring them out of Sodom to safety (Genesis 19:16). Joy has angelic hands, so guiding us from this Gomorrah all the way to glory.

But for all of that, the importance of Joy, for those who have found Christ, changes. He must increase; she must decrease. The thirst is no more a goddess. She meekly (yet still sometimes roughly) reminds us to go to Christ, drink of Christ, wait expectantly for Christ. On his diminishing interest in Joy, Lewis wrote, “It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed larger in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter” (291).

The end of Joy, for those who have come (by grace) to translate the purpose of Joy, is the homesickness for Christ “who is [our] life” to return (Colossians 3:4). One thing have we asked of him; one thing do we seek after: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his presence forever (Psalm 27:4). Creation groans; Christians groan. Time holds its breath; we hold our breath; Joy holds her breath — for him.