I met my aunt Margaret for the first time when I was ten. She was in a wheelchair in the middle of the front room, drooling uncontrollably, unaware of my presence, incontinent, and unable to take care of herself. And yet my uncle Gale cared for her, and he did so tenderly.

They were high school sweethearts, but now she was dying of brain cancer after only fifteen years together. My uncle didn’t abandon her. He didn’t get a mistress. No, he had publicly vowed, “in sickness and in health, till death do us part” — and he was faithful to his word. A few years later, she died. This is a biblical picture of marriage: joy through servanthood, faithfulness, and self-denial.

But times have changed. Our societal expectations for marriage have gone through a radical transformation, and those changes have affected many in the church.

Changing Expectations

One commentator describes the transformation this way: “The old attitude was that one must work for the marriage. The new attitude is that the marriage had better work for me” (Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West, 267). My uncle worked for his marriage. He was willing to forgo short-term pleasure for the sake of his wife, his children, and the glory of God. He believed that keeping his marriage vows would enhance his joy in this life and in the world to come.

But those who expect marriage to “work for me” often assume that “God just wants me to be happy” in the thin and predictable ways. Their focus is on me and my immediate needs. They will most likely bail when any significant, protracted marital trouble comes.

Here is how University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox sums up our new marital expectations:

Prior to the late 1960s, Americans were more likely to look at marriage and family through the prisms of duty, obligation, and sacrifice. . . . But the psychological revolution’s focus on individual fulfillment and personal growth changed all that. Increasingly, marriage was seen as a vehicle for a self-oriented ethic of romance, intimacy, and fulfillment. In this new psychological approach to married life, one’s primary obligation was not to one’s family but to oneself; hence, marital success was defined not by successfully meeting obligations to one’s spouse and children but by a strong sense of subjective happiness in marriage — usually to be found in and through an intense, emotional relationship with one’s spouse. The 1970s marked the period when, for many Americans, a more institutional model of marriage gave way to the “soul-mate model” of marriage.

Professor Wilcox’s “soul-mate model” is a fruit of expressive individualism. The assumptions behind this model are a moral solvent, dissolving the covenant bond of marriage. At its center is a potent, marriage-wrecking lie: God just wants me to be happy — and that is “happiness” as I choose to define it. Couples have used this lie to justify abortion, divorce, adultery, abandonment, and all kinds of selfishness.

“God wants couples to pursue a greater long-term marital happiness through Christlike self-denial.”

The problem with this lie is that it twists an important truth. God does want us to be happy, but he defines the terms, and immediate happiness is not God’s primary goal. God wants couples to pursue a greater long-term marital happiness through Christlike self-denial. God expects us to deny self — to defer immediate marital gratification — in order to experience greater long-term happiness. There are times in marriage when such self-denial takes great faith.

Beneath the Lie

This lie is a deeply rooted cultural assumption, and assumptions can be difficult to address because they are often subconscious. They seep into us through television, movies, literature, media, music, and our educational system.

For instance, one way they rise to the surface and become visible is through consumer advertising. Ad agencies get paid to identify the assumptions that motivate us. Here are some examples — each, if internalized a certain way, could be devastating to a marriage:

Outback Steakhouse invites us to eat at their restaurants because there are “No rules. Just right.”
McDonalds tells us to buy French fries because “You deserve a break today.”
Reebok urges us to buy their running shoes “Because you’re worth it.”
And Nike, throwing all restraint to the wind, urges us to “Just do it!”

The assumptions expressed by the mind of Christ, however, are strikingly different. Do we “deserve a break today”? Are we really “worth it”? And above all, should we give into sinful passion and “just do it”? No, we live by a deeper logic that counters the selfishness and presumption of the world around us: the logic of the cross. We deserved eternal death, but Christ humbled himself and died so that we might experience the full and abundant life.

“Jesus found joy through self-denial, and so will husbands and wives.”

The deepest marital happiness comes through self-denial, humility, unselfishness, patience, kindness, and the crucifixion of our me mentality. Ultimately, the wise Christian couple pursuing a happy, God-glorifying union will model their marriage on Christ and him crucified. Jesus found joy through self-denial (Hebrews 12:2), and so will husbands and wives.

Deny Yourself for Her

Again and again, Scripture gives us glimpses into the mind of Christ. After predicting his death and resurrection, Jesus turns to his disciples and says,

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24–25)

“Take up a cross? Are you kidding?” The cross was an instrument of torture, death, suffering, and shame. But Jesus urges us to save our lives by doing just that — taking up our cross.

We save our marriages through denying ourselves — making our spouse’s happiness as important as our own. We apply the principle of the cross. We do this with the conviction that happiness deferred in patient obedience to God is much greater than happiness immediately gratified.

Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:26–28)

Happy, fruitful marriages do not think mainly in terms of rights. They think from the mind of Christ. Jesus died to his rights to give us ours before God. Husbands and wives who follow him do the same.

Do nothing from selfishness or vain conceit, but in humility consider others more significant [or important] than yourself. (Philippians 2:3)

The closest “other” in your life is your spouse — the person that sleeps with you, eats with you, worships with you, and raises your children with you. Applying this principle gets really practical.

The Lie’s Fruit

As the lie proliferates in North America and beyond, the fruits are painfully obvious. Self-denial is an indispensable part of the glue that makes the marital covenant work. Without a willingness to deny self, people are less willing to marry, or they don’t stay married. In 1970, about 70 percent of Americans over age 18 were married. Today, for the first time in U.S. history, that number is 50 percent and falling.

“Marriage isn’t changing,” notes sociologist Mark Regnerus. “It’s receding. In an era of increasing options, technology, gender equality, ‘cheap’ sex, and secularization, fewer people — including fewer practicing Christians — actually want what marriage is. That’s the bottom line.”

Collapsing marriage also means collapsing fertility. We are not producing enough children to replace ourselves. Were it not for immigration, the population in North America would be shrinking. Thankfully, fertility rates in the evangelical church are better than the national average.

Rejecting the Lie

What can we do to reject the lie? We can start with the assumption that we don’t deserve to be happy. As we have already noted, the cross shows each of us what we deserve — death, and that is the bottom line. Therefore, no matter how bad our marital circumstances, we are always getting better than we deserve. Those who believe this can continually thank God for his kindness, in spite of their marital problems.

We can also reject the lie by believing that holy people are happy people, and marriage is one of God’s primary tools to produce personal holiness. “To be holy as he is holy,” notes Bruce Milne, “is the prescription for true and endless happiness. To be holy is to be happy . . . there is no joy like that of holiness” (The Message of Heaven and Hell, 52).

I have found it helpful to think of marriage as a spiritual gymnasium in which I strengthen personal holiness. Marriage toughens the muscle of forgiveness. It strengthens the willingness to love an enemy. It enhances the ability to humble myself and receive criticism. Marriage also teaches the crucial words, “I’m sorry. Would you please forgive me?”

In the marital gym, I also strengthen the crucial muscle of perseverance. Most marriages face a moment when the couple would like to call it quits but, if they persevere, almost always later admit that would have been a mistake. Focus on the Family once did a study of couples who persevered through the desire to divorce, only to find that five years later, most of those who persevered now described themselves as happy in their marriage. Persevering when the going gets tough requires self-denial, but it often solves many lesser problems.

Two Slaves Become One

Ambrose Bierce, a nineteenth-century short-story writer, not known for being a Christian, nevertheless summed up marriage with these insightful words: “Marriage is a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, one person.” My insightful wife sums up the mind of Christ in marriage this way: “Every fruitful, happy marriage begins with two funerals.”

This is how the mind of Christ thinks. It thinks like my uncle Gale. Reject the lie that immediate happiness is the goal. Yes, God does want us to be happy, but the deepest, most lasting happiness comes only to those who deny themselves and take up their cross daily. They serve unselfishly, consider their spouse more significant than themselves, persevere through marital troubles, practice forgiveness, and grow in humility. These are the marriages that maximize long-term happiness, and in such a way that God gets the glory.

Today I want to try to help us experience prayer as the vocalization of abiding in Christ. When I speak of prayer vocalizing the experience of abiding in Christ, I have in mind three ways prayer vocalizes abiding.

First, there is the vocalization of our need and our desire to be attached to Christ, like a branch to a vine. I have in mind that first cry when God saved us by putting a taste for his life-giving, love-giving, joy-giving sap on the tongue of our souls so that we cried out, “Yes, Lord, yes. I want this! Make me yours. Fasten me to yourself, branch to vine, forever.”

And I also have in mind the recurring cry, when we feel like our branch is withering, that says, “Hold on to me. Keep me in the vine. Don’t let me go. Be my life. If there’s a disease in me, disenchanting me with the all-satisfying sap of yourself, then heal me, prune me, and cause your life to surge in me again.”

That’s the first way that prayer vocalizes abiding in Christ: it is both the first cry to become attached to the vine and the recurring cry to remain attached to the vine.

Second, there is the daily vocalization of our thankful, happy, desperate dependence — moment by moment — on his ever-flowing sap of life. This isn’t the desperate cry of, “Keep me!” This is the happy, thankful, expression of confident trust.

When I dropped my wife Noël off at the airport yesterday at seven o’clock in the morning, as she was on her way to her mother’s one-hundredth birthday, I pulled up by the Delta drop-off, took her hand, and prayed, “Father, Noël and I are so thankful to be your adopted children, with every amazing thing that this implies. We receive right now the promise that we can cast all our anxieties on you, because you care for us (1 Peter 5:7). We rest, we revel, in your care. We love being branches in the vine. Meet every need as Noël travels and as I go home to prepare tomorrow’s message. In Jesus’s name. Amen.”

That’s the second way that prayer vocalizes abiding in Christ: expressing thankful, happy, desperate, confident dependence — moment by moment — on Christ’s life-giving, love-giving, joy-giving sap.

Third, there is the vocalization of our longing that Christ’s life and love and joy would flow through us into living fruit — the longing that this fruit would course with the same life and love and joy that we have by abiding in Christ.

“God saved us by putting a taste for his life-giving, love-giving, joy-giving sap on the tongue of our souls.”

So when I got home from the airport, I got down on my knees in my study and said, “Father, would you help me now prepare a message for chapel tomorrow that would bear much fruit? Would you grant that all the life and love and joy of Christ that I have known throughout these decades of abiding would become life and love and joy in the lives of those who listen?”

Six Ways We Abide in Christ

My aim is to help us experience prayer as the vocalization of abiding in Christ, as (1) the cry to abide in the vine, (2) the day-by-day expression of joyful, confident dependence on the vine, and (3) the longing that we would bear fruit because of our attachment to the vine.

To do that, it seems we should spend a good bit of our time pushing into the reality of what abiding in Christ is. I am going to point to six ways we abide in Christ.

1. Receiving Life from Christ

Let’s start with the picture in John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” The picture is of the disciple of Jesus as a branch and Jesus as the vine.

So, the least we can say is that abiding in Christ is the experience of getting our life from Christ. The sap of life flows into the branch if the branch is abiding, remaining in the vine. If there is no attachment to the vine, then there is no life in the branch.

2. Remaining in His Love

A second way to describe the experience of abiding is to say that we remain in the love of Christ. John 15:9: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” So the life-giving attachment to the vine can be described as a love-giving attachment to the vine. The vine loves the branches. Love is flowing to the branches. The life that flows to the branches is the life of love.

So now the command “Abide in me” (John 15:4) and the implicit command “Abide in my life, which flows to you” become a little more concrete: “Abide in my love” (John 15:9). Essentially God is saying, “Keep on receiving and welcoming and enjoying and trusting and treasuring my love.” That is the experience of abiding in the vine.

3. Abiding in His Word

We can describe the experience of abiding yet another way. Abiding in Christ means abiding in his word, and his words abiding in us. John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you . . .” The phrase “my words abide in you” stands in the place where Jesus himself stood in John 15:4: “Abide in me, and I in you.” We see that “I, Jesus, abiding in you” becomes “my words abiding in you.”

“The experience of abiding in Christ is not only abiding in his life and love, but also in his word.”

And it is not just his words abiding in us, but us abiding in his words — just like we abide in him. According to John 8:31, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.” So the experience of abiding in Christ is not only abiding in his life, and abiding in his love, but also abiding in his word. John says it again in 1 John 2:24: “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.”

I take this to mean that the life and the love that flow from the vine into the branches are communicated to us and experienced by us through the word of Christ. The life of Jesus and the love of Jesus accomplish nothing in our lives apart from the word of Jesus.

There are no incognito Christians. Wordless experiences — that is, experiences without any conscious connection with Christ — are worthless experiences. Christ gets no glory from human experiences that we do not know to be from Christ.

We know experiences to be from Christ because of the word of Christ. For he says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). And so we respond, “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Therefore, we abide in Christ — we abide in his life and in his love — by receiving and welcoming and understanding and believing the reality mediated by the words of Christ.

4. Drinking from Christ

A fourth way to describe abiding in Christ is to see the connection between the branch drinking the life-giving sap of the vine and the soul-drinking Christ as the water of life or the soul-feeding on him as the bread of heaven. John 6:35: “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’” Coming to Christ so as not to hunger anymore and believing in Christ so as not to thirst anymore is the experience of abiding in Christ. Abiding is believing, understood as eating and drinking Christ.

“Prayer expresses thankful, happy, desperate, confident dependence on Christ’s life-giving, love-giving sap.”

Here it is again in John 7:37–38: “Jesus cried out, ‘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.’” Notice that thirsting for Christ, coming to Christ, and drinking of Christ are replaced with believing in Christ. So the experience of believing in Christ is thirsting for Christ and coming to Christ and drinking from Christ — that is, abiding in Christ like a branch abiding in the vine and drinking the all-satisfying life and love that are in it.

Therefore, we can describe the experience of abiding in Christ as believing on Christ, provided we give the term believing its full-blooded meaning from the Gospel of John — namely, believing is thirsting, coming, drinking, and saying: “This is the end of my quest. Here is life and love and joy.”

5. Savoring the Son’s Joy

That word joy leads to a fifth way of describing the experience of abiding in Christ. In John 15:11, after drawing out the implications of the vine and the branches, Jesus adds this: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

Be sure to understand this in connection with the picture of the vine and the branches. He does not simply say that because we are abiding in the vine, our joy will be full. What he says is that because we are abiding in the vine, his joy will be in us, and therefore our joy will be full. In other words, what the branch receives from the vine is the very joy of the vine: “My joy [will] be in you” (John 15:11).

Let me give you a taste of what this experience is from Galatians 4:6. Paul says, “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Push into the reality of this. Think of it in terms of the vine and the branch. We are redeemed and made the legal sons of God by the death of Christ. And then he says that because we are his sons legally, God sends the Spirit of the Son — the Spirit of the vine or the sap — into our branch-hearts, shouting (krazō), “Abba! Father!” And how does the Son of God feel about his Father? He loves him: “I love the Father” (John 14:31).

That is, he takes infinite pleasure in the Father. He enjoys the Father. And he flows into our hearts, our branch, bringing that, being that, exulting in that. He does this, to use the words of John 15:11, “that my joy may be in you.” He flows into us, “That my joy in my Father made be your joy in your Father.”

So the experience of abiding in Christ is the experience of enjoying God by the Spirit of the Son of God enjoying his Father in us. If you find welling up within you the cry — spoken or unspoken, but real — that says, “Father! I need you. Thank you for redeeming me. Thank you for adopting me. Oh, how precious you are to me! I love you!” then guess what? You are experiencing the Spirit of the Son of God loving his Father in you. You are experiencing John 15:11, the joy of Christ himself becoming your joy, and your joy becoming full. You are experiencing what it means to abide in Christ.

6. Feasting on Calvary

Consider one last way to describe the experience of abiding in Christ. In John 6:56 Jesus says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” The crucified flesh and the shed blood of Jesus are the wellspring of all the life and love and joy and words that we receive from the vine. To eat and drink at the cross is to get everything from the sacrifice of Christ.

In summary, I would arrange the first five ways of describing the experience of abiding in Christ like this:

First is the experience of the soul’s thirst and hunger drinking from Christ with satisfaction.
Second, as the branch drinks from the vine, it receives the life of the vine. No attachment to the vine, no life in the branch.
Third, as we drink from the life of the vine, we find it to be the life of love — Christ’s invincible love for us. And we rest in it and feed on it.
Fourth, as we drink from the life and love of the vine, we experience the joy of Jesus as our joy —the Spirit of the Son singing out his joyful love for the Father in our hearts.
Fifth, we find all of this mediated to us through the words of Christ so that his words become our life.

And finally, we discover that every benefit of abiding in the vine was secured for us by the crucified flesh and shed blood of Christ. And that sacrifice becomes for us the all-supplying bread and drink of heaven.

How Prayer Speaks

Now let’s revisit where we started, with prayer as the vocalization of this experience of abiding in Christ. There are (1) the prayers that vocalize the desire to abide in Christ, (2) the prayers that vocalize the daily reality of abiding in Christ, and (3) the prayers that vocalize the desire for fruit through abiding in Christ.

With Desperate Desire

First, there are prayers that vocalize the desire to abide in Christ. When Jesus asked the Samaritan woman at the well for a drink, she couldn’t believe that he, a Jew, would ask her. Then he says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10).

“You would have asked him” — this is where it all starts. There’s a sliver, a glimpse, of the life-giving vine right there in front of you, a glimmer of hope, and then comes an invitation: “Ask me. Just ask me.”

And many of us have responded: “Let me drink the living water. Attach me, Jesus, to yourself. Make me a living branch. Forever.” But if you haven’t tasted, haven’t asked to be grafted into the vine — this would be a good time. Vocalize to God your need and your desire to abide in Christ.

With Happy Trust

Then there are the prayers that vocalize the daily reality of abiding in Christ. These tell Christ — and tell the Father — that you trust him. Tell them that their love for you is your life and your joy. Tell Christ, in the presence of your spouse or children or friends, that his words are words of life to you.

Tell Christ that abiding in his love makes you glad. Say to him, on behalf of your family or your small group, and in their presence, “Jesus, your sacrifice, your words, your life, your love, your joy is everything to me. I taste them. They are my food and my drink. They satisfy my soul.” Tell him.

Do what the saints have done for millennia. Speak to the Lord of your trust. And tell him of the pleasures of abiding in Christ.

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;         my soul thirsts for you;my flesh faints for you,         as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,         beholding your power and glory.Because your steadfast love is better than life,         my lips will praise you.So I will bless you as long as I live;         in your name I will lift up my hands. (Psalm 63:1–4)

They feast on the abundance of your house,         and you give them drink from the river of your delights.For with you is the fountain of life;         in your light do we see light. (Psalm 36:8–9)

With Fruitful Zeal

Finally, there are the prayers that vocalize the desire for fruit through abiding in Christ. This is the goal of life and love and joy flowing from the vine — a kind of life and a kind of love and a kind of joy that has in it a happy pressure to expand, to increase, by becoming the life and love and joy in others. That’s what it is to bear fruit.

Jesus says in John 4:14, “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Yes, and more than a spring: “Whoever believes in me [abides in me, drinks from me] . . . ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). Or, as Jesus says in John 15:5, “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.”

This is the sap of the vine, the living water, the very life and love and joy of the Son of God, coursing through your branch-life and then miraculously increasing — your joy increasing — in the life and love and joy of another.

And Jesus says, “Don’t be passive about this. Make this the great passion of your prayer.” He says in John 15:7–8, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish [for every kind of God-glorifying fruit], and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.” Jesus is saying, “Ask me! Ask me for God-glorifying fruit!”

When Christ’s words abide in you, when his truth, life, love, and joy abide in you, you will be given a spiritual taste for God’s fruitful will, and you will pray with Spirit-given passion, “O God, make my life fruitful. Let me not wither in the hot blasts of worldliness. Do whatever painful pruning you must do. Grant me so to drink that I become a spring — yes, a river! — and a fruitful branch. Oh, let me never be content until my joy in you bears fruit in the joy of others in you. By this, Father, are you glorified — that I bear much fruit. Do it. Amen.”

One of my favorite details about Easter Sunday, and Jesus’s resurrection body, is his scars. The victory of Easter is so great, the triumph of the risen Christ over sin and death is so resounding, that we might be prone to overlook, or quickly forget, an unexpected detail like this.

When Jesus first appeared to his disciples, “they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit” (Luke 24:37). So Jesus says to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:38–39). Then Luke comments, “And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet” — meaning, he showed them his scars (Luke 24:40).

In the Gospel of John, when Jesus finally appears to doubting Thomas after eight long days, he says to him, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27).

That Jesus’s resurrected body would still show evidence of his wounds, that the scars of crucifixion could still be seen and touched, was both a confirmation and a surprise. The confirmation was that this was in fact him — and him risen. The same body that was killed on the cross rose from the grave. He was not a spirit or ghost. He was risen, fully alive, now in glorified humanity.

“Jesus’s scars are marks of his love. His scars tell the good news that he did not die for his own sins but for ours.”

The surprise is that we might expect a resurrected body not to have scars. That might seem like a defect. But it is not a defect. It is a feature. Because these scars, these rich wounds, are marks of his love. These scars tell the good news that he did not die for his own sins, but for ours. His wounds are invitations to sinners and assurances to his saints. His scars preach good news. They are marks of Easter glory, the very glory that makes the horrors of his death into what we now call “Good Friday.”

The Gospel in All Caps

And so on Easter Sunday, we come to the end of Galatians, and one of the last things Paul writes with his own hand is this: “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). Like Jesus, Paul also had gospel scars — scars which pointed not to his own work, but to Jesus’s work.

Just as sinners had struck and killed the Son of God, so too sinners had struck and scarred his messenger. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul mentions some of what he has suffered for the sake of Christ: “. . . countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned” (2 Corinthians 11:23–25). Paul’s scars, “the marks of Jesus” he received from preaching the resurrection of Christ, are his final argument in Galatians. Before he closes in Galatians 6:18 with, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen,” he puts the final period in place with his own life — with what he has been willing to suffer in order to preach and defend the meaning of Good Friday and the news of Easter Sunday.

But not only is Paul’s final argument “the marks of Jesus” that he carries in his own body, but in this last section, he takes up the pen himself, relieving the secretary to whom he has dictated the rest of the letter. And so he says in Galatians 6:11, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.”

This is Paul’s way — here at the end, with so much on the line in Galatians — of shifting into bold font. This is the apostle Paul in all caps. So, these precious five sentences of Galatians 6:12–17 that will follow are direct and blood-earnest, with a power that is very fitting for Easter Sunday. And what we see is that this last flourish of Paul’s pen turns on the reality of boasting. Let’s look at these verses in that light, with Easter eyes, in three steps.

1. Humans are born to boast.

We are born boasters. You are a born boaster — in two senses. The first sense is that we are boasters by creation. God designed us, before sin entered in, with the capacity to boast. Indeed, he designed us with the calling to boast. And what I mean by boasting is rejoicing out loud in words.

God made humans not only to think and do, but to feel and to speak. He gave us hearts, and he gave us mouths. He created us in his image, meaning he created us to image him in this world, to represent him and remind others of him — both fellow humans and the watching angels.

And he not only gave us the ability to think and consider, but also to feel. He not only gave us bodies to move and work and do, but tongues to speak, giving meaning to our works with words. In other words, God made us to boast in him — that is, to not only know him with our minds, but rejoice in him in our hearts, and to not only live in obedience to him, but speak words out of our hearts that point others to him. God made us to boast in him.

Because of Sin

And as we know all too well, though, there is a second sense in which we are born to boast. We are born into sin, and so our natural inclination to boast often becomes sinful boasting. Instead of rejoicing out loud about God, we rejoice out loud about ourselves in all the various and complex forms this takes. We all know this. We all have lived this. And of course, we’re often far quicker to recognize it in others than in ourselves.

As a youth baseball coach, let me tell you that we don’t have to teach kids to boast. Rather, we try to help them not indulge their instinct to boast in the heat of the game. We say things like, “Let your play do the talking.”

What about your own soul? What are your boasts? What aspects of life — whether manifest gifts from God or seeming abilities and accomplishments — do you rejoice in most and feel most drawn to express in words? What are you so regularly excited about that you can’t help but talk about? What qualities, possessions, abilities, achievements, or relational connections make you look good when others hear about them?

“The question isn’t whether we will boast, but in what and in whom.”

When Paul takes up the pen for himself in Galatians 6:11, he puts boasting at the heart of his last push toward the Galatians. They, as well as the false teachers trying to influence them, and Paul himself, are all born boasters. We are born boasters. The question isn’t whether we will boast, but in what and in whom we will boast.

How Will You Boast?

First, Paul turns to what not to boast in:

It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. (Galatians 6:12–13)

I think this is the most direct and succinct summary of what motivates the troublemakers in Galatia. They are putting on a show to appease unbelieving Jews. They are play-acting. They themselves do not keep the whole Jewish law. They know they can’t, and they don’t want to, besides.

But what they do want to do is avoid persecution. This new movement of Christians, claiming that Jesus is the long-awaited Christ, is troubling Jewish leaders. And now the movement is spreading to Gentiles. Non-Christian Jews want to snuff this out. They begin persecuting Christians — like Paul himself had done, before the risen Christ appeared to him and turned his life upside down.

And so the false teachers are trying to avoid persecution. They want to appease non-Christian Jews by boasting to them that Gentile converts to Christ are coming under the Jewish law. The word here for “make a good showing” is literally “have a good face.” The false teachers themselves don’t keep the law, but they are trying to get Gentile Christians to receive circumcision so they can boast in their flesh and “have a good face” to avoid persecution.

And Paul says that however well-intentioned or naïve this may be, it is dead wrong, and it compromises the very heart of the Christian message that promises Jesus is enough for right standing with God.

So, we are born boasters — by God’s design, and also in our sin. And the false teachers, to save their own flesh (from persecution) want to be able to boast in the flesh (from circumcision) of these Gentile Christians in Galatia.

2. Jesus turns boasting upside down.

Second, Paul contrasts their sinful boast with his own holy boast, which he wants the Galatians, and us, to join him in. This is how he wants us to rejoice in words.

Paul does not say that becoming a Christian banishes all boasting. We still boast. Oh, do we! Worship is boasting. Preaching is boasting. Sharing the gospel is a holy and humble kind of boasting — rejoicing in words. But Christian boasting is not like the natural, sinful boasting into which we’re born. It is not boasting in the flesh. It is not boasting in outward appearance. It is not boasting in our own strength.

Christian boasting is boasting turned upside down because of the worth and beauty and power of Jesus Christ. Look at Galatians 6:14, which says: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” So Paul does boast. But he boasts in the cross, of all things. The cross.

Christ on the Cross

Today, it’s easy for us to be all too familiar with the cross. We see them on steeples. We wear them on necklaces. We sing about the cross. And it’s easy to forget or to overlook what the cross meant in the first century.

Some might be familiar with the hymn “Old Rugged Cross,” which calls the cross “an emblem of suffering and shame.” The cross was horrific. It was reserved for the worst of rebels against the Roman empire, and it was designed to not only make death literally excruciating and lengthy, but also utterly shameful.

And Paul says, “May I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What a turn, that the very thing — a crucified Messiah — that seemed so shameful, such a stumbling block to Jews, and such folly to Gentiles, would be not only a critical truth for Christians, but central. We talk about the cross every Sunday. We remember it at the Lord’s Table. We depict it in baptism. The cross — the public execution of the Son of God — is not just a barrier to overcome to embrace the Christian faith, but it is at the very heart of our faith. We celebrate it, and we draw attention to it. We boast in it.

Why is that? Because the wounds Jesus received at the cross were not for his own sins, but for ours. Isaiah 53:5 says,

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.

The eternal Son of God took on human flesh and blood and went to that rugged, offensive, horrific, shamefully public cross, as the spotless Lamb, to die for our sins. For our rebellion, for our countless sinful boasts in our own flesh, we were the ones who deserved to spill our own blood in violent death and be eternally separated from God.

But the wonder of Christianity, the heart of our faith, the very good news which we call “the gospel,” is that Jesus went to the cross for us — for all those who would take Paul’s invitation to turn our boasting upside down and rejoice in words, “Jesus is Lord.”

Our Suffering and Weakness

We see elsewhere in Paul how Jesus turns our boasting upside down. Instead of boasting in comfort and ease in this life, Paul says in Romans 5:3, “We boast in our sufferings.” If God works the greatest good through the greatest evil — that is, the crucifixion of the Son of God — then our sufferings in this life are turned upside down. We grieve them, yet even as we do, we rejoice in what God is doing in and through them.

And instead of boasting in our own strengths and abilities, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:30, “I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” And in 2 Corinthians 12:9 he says, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Jesus turns our boasting upside down. Instead of boasting in our comforts, we boast in our sufferings. Instead of boasting in our strengths, we boast in our weaknesses. Instead of boasting in natural human conceptions of glory and power, just like the world, we boast in the offense of the cross.

Cross-Conscious Boasting

But it’s Easter Sunday. What about the resurrection? When Paul says in Galatians 6:14, “May I never boast unless in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” how does Easter fit? If all Christian boasting is a boasting in and under the banner of the cross, what do we make of our Easter boast that he is risen?

The answer is that, yes, we boast in the resurrection, but it is a certain kind of boasting. It is a humbled boast. It is a God-magnifying boast. It is a Christ-treasuring boast. It is a cross-conscious boast. It is a boast in the surpassing power of God uniquely on display in and through human weakness, and suffering, and even death. It is the kind of boasting that comes on the other side of the grave, on the other side of crucifixion, on the other side of Christ turning the world, and us, upside down.

“We boast in the cross because the one who died there for our sins rose again Sunday morning to be our living Lord.”

And not only is the Easter boast permissible; it is essential. Paul’s boasting in the cross implies the Easter boast. If there is no Easter boast, there is no boasting in the cross. If Jesus stays dead, there is no glory in his cross. We boast in the cross, because the one who died there for our sins rose again Sunday morning to be our living, breathing, loving, reigning Lord. And our boasting in the resurrection is a certain kind of boasting because it is also a boasting in the cross.

3. Christians boast in the resurrection too.

Let’s see the resurrection for ourselves in Galatians 6:15–16, which begin with the word for and explain what Paul has just said Galatians 6:14. Galatians 6:15–16 says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” The first and most obvious link to resurrection is “new creation.” New creation points to God’s action and initiative and power, not ours.

That’s the contrast between circumcision and new creation. In this context, circumcision would be an action the Galatians would take in an effort to make sure they’re in right standing with God. And remarkably, Paul says uncircumcision doesn’t count either. Neither taking that step in the flesh, or refusing to take that step, wins you God’s acceptance. You cannot, in your flesh, earn God’s full and final favor.

What counts is what he does. His work in Christ. His new creation. And the beginning of this new creation is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter Sunday is the great first and decisive initiative, the great burst of divine power that launches a new creation, beginning with Christ then coming to us, as God makes us new creatures in Christ, through faith, and then culminating someday with a new heavens and new earth. So “new creation” is the first glimpse of Easter.

Crucified with Christ

The second link to resurrection is the connection to Galatians 2:20, a connection which appears at the end of Galatians 6:14. Here Paul says that by the cross “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The other place in this letter where Paul talks about being crucified with Christ is Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Galatians 6:14 only mentions crucifixion, but what Galatians 2:20 makes plain is that crucifixion with Christ by faith means resurrection with him. Just as Christ was crucified and raised, so Paul’s old self — our old self — was crucified with Christ by faith, and we too have been raised to new life. We now live with a new heart, a new center, a new ultimate allegiance; we are new creatures, indwelt by God’s Spirit, even as we continue to battle and make headway against remaining sin.

And this reality of being a “new creation” in Christ is both personal and individual, as well as corporate. Not only did Christ very personally “love me and give himself for me” at the cross, but he loved us, his church, and made us a people together in him.

Galatians 6:16 says that “all who walk by this rule” — that is, all who own God’s work and power in making them new creatures — are God’s true people. He calls them “the Israel of God.” This is the church, the true Israel. “The Jerusalem above,” as he says in Galatians 4:36. Or like he says in Philippians 3:3, “We are the [true] circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and [boast] in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

There is a twist of irony here in response to the false teachers. Do you want to be God’s people? Do you want to be in “the Israel of God,” in contrast to the Israel of the flesh? Then leave behind the life of flesh, circumcision, and law, and live instead according to the Spirit and faith and love, as those who have been loved by God in Christ.

Scarred for Christ

Finally, we end with one last Easter connection to the resurrection: “the marks of Jesus.” Paul comes to the end of Galatians, takes the pen in his own hand to write Galatians 6:11–16, and then his one last word, before the concluding benediction, is one final boast. And it is a boast in the cross: “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17).

In other words, Paul is saying, “Not only do I answer with this letter, but I answer with my life. My skin is scarred — from being beaten, and lashed, and stoned — because I have stood by this gospel with my own life.”

He is saying, “Rather than trying to tweak the message to avoid persecution, as the false teachers are doing, I have not been deterred by threats. Rather than seeking, under pressure, to make marks in other people’s flesh and boast in a head count of circumcisions, marks have been made in my flesh as I have preached and defended the truth that Jesus’s cross and resurrection, embraced by faith alone, are enough to get and keep us right with God.”

“And so I bear on my own body,” Paul says, “as faint echoes and pointers, the very ‘marks of Jesus’ that he bears on his resurrection body — marks that are no defect, but shine with glory.” Paul boasts in the cross and the resurrection. And so we boast, The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.

Commune with the Living Christ

As we come to the Lord’s Table on this Easter Sunday, we celebrate that the Jesus whom we remember here is alive. His resurrection not only makes good on God’s word, and not only vindicates his sinless life, and not only confirms that his cross-work was effective to cover our sins, and not only gives us access to that salvation by union with him, but the resurrection means he is alive, right now, in glorified humanity, scars and all, at God’s right hand, to know and enjoy forever.

We call this “Communion” not only because we commune with each other as we come together to his Table, but first and foremost because we commune with him — the risen, living Christ. As we eat in faith, we receive him afresh, by his Spirit, and commune with our risen, living Lord.