Audio Transcript

What is the easiest step of love — a step so easy, you can accomplish it before you even get out of bed in the morning? Today, we find the answer in an unsuspecting context. The answer comes in an old sermon from John Piper on 1 Timothy 2:1–4. And it happens to be my favorite Piper sermon to turn to when geopolitical tensions become evident in the world, as we have seen a lot of in 2022.

The sermon is an early one, preached back on January 20, 1981. In fact, it was preached just two days before the Iran hostage crisis came to an end — also the same day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the new president of the United States. There was a lot of national and international news in the air when Piper preached this sermon on 1 Timothy 2:1–4. In this context, the apostle Paul was eager for Christians to hold to the faith with “a good conscience” (1 Timothy 1:19).

And to that end, as Paul explains, Christians should entertain a global view of reality. It’s why Paul urges these early Christians to offer

supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings . . . for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1–4)

For individual Christians, these prayers for kings, prayers for the leaders of nations, are essential to us keeping a clean conscience and not shipwrecking our faith. That’s an incredible claim, connecting our awareness of, and love for, the globe’s rulers to our own perseverance in the faith. Here’s Pastor John to explain how it all works.

A good conscience is a conscience that does not condemn us for what we do and that approves of what we do do. Did I say that right? It does not condemn us for what we do and approves us for what we do. That means, therefore, that the reason Paul is saying, “You’ve got to have a clear conscience in order to maintain faith” is that if we do things that our conscience constantly condemns, what’s going to happen is something like this — this is the way my experience works, anyway. See if yours doesn’t also.

If I fall into a habit that my conscience condemns, my conscience starts to say to me, “Piper, all that talk about trusting Christ and hoping in God is a lot of hot air, because if you really trusted in Christ and hoped in God, you wouldn’t go on breaking your conscience like that.” And therefore, conscience starts to bore holes in the belly of the ship of faith, and it starts to sink, and your confidence in the reality of your own conversion starts to melt away, because you’re constantly acting against your own conscience.

Either one of two things is going to happen. Either we confirm the genuineness of our faith by changing our behavior and plugging up those holes of conscience, or we go on and we show that our ship of faith was never seaworthy in the first place, and we sink into unbelief and blasphemy like Hymenaeus and Alexander did (1 Timothy 1:19–20).

Keeping the Conscience Clear

Therefore, Paul’s charges to Timothy to hold to faith and maintain a good conscience are tremendously important commands or admonitions, and anything that Paul can say that will help us maintain a good conscience ought to be welcomed with open arms. I think that’s what he does in 1 Timothy 2:1. Since you must keep a good conscience in order not to make shipwreck of faith, therefore, I urge you, first of all, pray for all men.

Now, in order to see why it is that failing to pray for all men will give us a bad conscience and jeopardize our faith, I think we have to ask, What is it that, for a Christian, pricks his conscience in relation to other people? The answer to that, of course, is clear from the whole Bible. All of God’s instruction is summed up in two commandments: love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.

In other words, anything that a Christian does, or leaves undone, that is unloving, will give him a bad conscience — or ought to give him a bad conscience if it’s not seared. Now, with that as a foundation, I think it starts to become clear why we must pray for other people in order to keep a clean conscience and so not make shipwreck of faith.

I see three reasons why prayer for other people is of first importance. That’s what I’m after to explain: How come he says prayer is of first importance in keeping a clear conscience and not making shipwreck of faith?

Prayer Helps Others with God’s Power

First, prayer taps the power of God on behalf of other people. I could try to help you as a pastor. You could try to help your neighbors. You could try to help Ronald Reagan, Governor Quie, Mayor Fraser, without praying for them, and you might do a little good, and judged from a limited perspective, you could do perhaps much good in the world’s eyes. But the little good that we could do without praying isn’t worthy to be compared with the great good that God can do if he, in response to our prayer, starts working on behalf of another person.

“The first thing you do for a person, if you love them, is ask God to work on their behalf.”

So if we want to do what’s best for people, if we really love them, then I think of first importance will be to pray that God work for them. The first thing you do for a person, if you love them, is ask God to work on their behalf. Of course, the way that God answers that prayer is almost always going to involve your labor of love on their behalf, but what can be accomplished through prayer is vastly more than you could accomplish without prayer.

Prayer Is the Easiest Step of Love

There’s a second reason why I think it’s of first importance to keep our conscience clear through praying for other people. It’s the easiest step of love. You don’t even have to get out of bed to pray for kings and all those who are in high positions. It doesn’t take any great physical strain, no great financial output. Of all the forms that love can take, prayer is probably the easiest. You just get down on your knees and rest and talk to the Lord about what you want him to do for other people.

Isn’t it true that if we are unwilling to do for other people what is easiest, then it’s very unlikely that we will be willing to do what’s hard on their behalf? Therefore, it makes sense, doesn’t it, that Paul would begin by saying, “Of first importance, if you want to love other people, is that you pray for all men.”

Prayer Goes Farther in Its Effects

The third reason why I think it’s of paramount importance is that prayer reaches farther than anything else in its effects that we can do. Before there were those satellites up there going around the earth, we could send a live television program from coast to coast, but we couldn’t send it, could we, all the way around to the other side of the world live? But now, if we want to get it to the other side of the world live immediately, we send it away from the world, and then it comes back to the world. Pretty simple. Get it live immediately.

“Prayer reaches farther in its effects than anything else that we can do.”

I think that’s a beautiful picture of the efficacy and extension of prayer. Without prayer, we can have an influence on a limited circumference of people, we can work hard and try to do good for them, and if we wait long enough, maybe by osmosis, our influence will spread all the way around the world. But God’s influence is everywhere and immediate. Therefore, doesn’t it make sense that first of all, if we want to help other people, if you want to bless the most people in the shortest amount of time with the most blessing, it just makes sense that you’d start by going to the satellite, going to God?

When a broadcaster wants to get a message to the greatest amount of people in the shortest amount of time — you can be sure that’s going to happen today if those hostages are released before this service is over, or before we meet tonight; we’re all going to know about it because of those satellites. If a broadcaster wants to do that, isn’t it interesting that, paradoxically, to get the message quickest this way, he sends it that way? That’s what we should do for other people. To bless them quickest this way, we should look that way first, up to God.

Pray for All People

If we would not make shipwreck of faith, but rather keep a clear conscience, therefore, we must pray for all men because of these three reasons:

Prayer taps the power of God for other people.
Prayer is the first and easiest step of love.
Prayer reaches farther in its effects than anything else that we can do.

Several months into a new executive administration, how might we describe the state of affairs when it comes to abortion in America?

Grievous would not be too strong a word. Distressing and outrageous also describe my response to the renewed efforts to enshrine abortion as health care, turn it into a super-spreader event worldwide, and purge dissenters working within the U.S. government who think it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. But though God can, without sin, “let loose . . . his burning anger, wrath, indignation, and distress” (Psalm 78:49), I cannot. So, what follows is a brief state of the union for abortion that should fuel our first and best response: prayer.

For thirty years, from Boston to Beijing, I’ve done my best to respond to the shedding of innocent blood with prayerful actions. I’ve now worked in seventeen countries where abortion is most concentrated, prayerfully training pastors in pro-life ethics and their churches in pregnancy crisis intervention. But I also set aside time every week to pray with others for the end of abortion.

Why? Because some evils are so profoundly demonic in their power structure that they will not be cast out without prayer. Child-killing is one of those evils. It’s not merely a failure to maintain the human rights of the defenseless (Psalm 82:3–4). Nor is it simply an exercise in personal autonomy. It’s unrealized demonic servitude. The psalmist says, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters . . . and the land was polluted with blood” (Psalm 106:37–38). Certainly we must do more than pray. But let us not delude ourselves about what we are truly up against.

Affordable ‘Health Care’

According to the White House Fact Sheet of June 30, 2021, “The Biden Administration is committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in the U.S. and around the world. Everyone should have access to quality, affordable health care.”

“Affordable health care” is government-speak for “easy abortion.” Through executive memorandums and policy directives, Biden is removing the restrictions on U.S. and globalist organizations promoting abortion worldwide.

Biden has committed to “remove, as part of the President’s first budget, the Hyde Amendment restriction from government spending bills, reflecting the President’s support for expanding access to health care, including reproductive health care, through Medicaid and other federally-funded programs.”

The Hyde Amendment, implemented in 1980, has for forty years been the one point of conciliation between abortion advocates and pro-life taxpayers — that which is justified as a private choice, let’s agree, ought not to be paid for with public dollars.

Ending the Hyde Amendment forces all of us to pay for anyone’s abortion. It will not only lead to more abortion; it will further delegitimize dissent, religious liberty, and conscience clauses, along with emboldening the de-platforming and de-monetizing of those who dare to disagree.

Abortion by Mail

Besides removing abortion restrictions, this administration is increasing abortion funding. Domestically, its budget calls for a massive infusion of tax dollars into the Title X family planning, providing $340 million for Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. Internationally, he proposes a 72 percent increase in funding, or $583.7 million for the United Nations Population Fund.

“‘Affordable health care’ is government-speak for ‘easy abortion.’”

The United Nations Population Fund euphemistically calls itself a “sexual and reproductive health agency.” What they are is a missions organization. Within their worldview, population is the sin problem. Poor countries like Uganda, Ghana, El Salvador, and Guatemala, which still legally protect their unborn children, are the mission field. Abortion, contraception, and sterilization is the plan of salvation.

Relaxing enforcement of safety protocols is the opposite of “health care for women.” Yet this spring, the Food and Drug Administration officially suspended enforcement of the in-person requirement for chemical abortion pills. Abortion by mail is now permitted. Multiple studies, including that of Dr. Donna Harrison, covering a twenty-year-long period, report that complications are four times more frequent in chemical abortions compared to surgical abortions. Adverse events include hemorrhage, infections, and trauma from a woman’s seeing her own unborn child expelled.

In April, the National Institutes of Health removed the restrictions imposed on research using fetal stem cells under the previous administration. In May, the International Society for Stem Cell Research ended its long-standing rule that limited experimentation on human embryos to the first fourteen days of creation. This makes human embryos akin to lab rats. As the Lozier Institute writes, “The removal of the 14-day limit shows their real goal: unlimited human experimentation, making human embryos into disposable laboratory supplies.” In June, Democratic lawmakers introduced the “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which, if passed and signed by the president, would nullify all state abortion regulations.

Some Light in the Darkness

At the same time, American citizens at the state level are rushing to the defense of the unborn. In the first five months of 2021, 48 U.S. state legislatures advanced approximately 489 pro-life bills. As of the end of May, 89 new pro-life bills from 26 states had been enacted. Some, like the Arkansas bill signed this spring, ban almost all abortions. Other states have banned abortion after twelve weeks gestation, sex-selective abortion, and abortion due to prenatal disability diagnosis.

At the local level, Lubbock, Texas, is now one of 36 cities that have outlawed abortion within their city limits and declared themselves a Sanctuary City for the Unborn. Their local Planned Parenthood was forced to stop aborting babies on June 1 when this local law went into effect.

Hanging over all of this, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agreed this spring to take up the biggest abortion case in thirty years. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court will answer “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

Judicial analyst Bruce Hausknecht writes,

The 1973 Roe decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, created artificial “trimester” rules for regulating abortion based on the concept of “viability,” the time at which a preborn baby was generally thought to be able to survive, with medical help, outside the womb. . . . Advances in medical technology have lowered the age of viability. By the time of the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, for example, the age of viability had decreased from 28 weeks to around 23 to 24 weeks. Recently, a Wisconsin child celebrated his first birthday after a premature birth at 21 weeks, 2 days gestation.

What Can We Do?

How then should we respond to the new administration unleashing its power to promote mass child-killing at home and abroad? We pray that God would grant our president a spirit of repentance, as he did to us. And we pray God would restrain him and frustrate his plans.

“Some evils are so profoundly demonic in their power structure that they will not be cast out without prayer.”

I pray for our nation as a grieving patriot. I don’t put much stock in SCOTUS having the moral courage to follow the Constitution as written. As Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote to the Court last month, “Nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion.” The stronghold of abortion is not in the text. It’s in the human heart and in the fear of man. That’s what drives me to pray.

In 1896, SCOTUS ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial discrimination laws were constitutional. It was a cowardly decision that played to the powerful forces within the culture of the time, not to the text of the constitution. It took 58 years for SCOTUS to find the courage in Brown v. Board of Education to say, “No more! The 14th amendment calls for equal protection of all persons.” I pray we can witness such a declaration in our time.

As the church, we must not be afraid to suffer the hostility that would come if we lived out our faith like the midwives of Egypt. To those dear sisters, suffering many injustices themselves, child-killing was the hill to die on. They “feared God” (Exodus 1:17) and so protected their babies from slaughter. When pressured by Pharoah himself, they still refused to conform (Exodus 1:18–19).

In return, God favored them (Exodus 1:20). Why? For rescuing the babies from slaughter? Not exactly. Rather, “because the midwives feared God, he gave them families” (Exodus 1:21). In other words, God rewarded their faith in him, which was expressed in their bold, pro-life actions.

“Fly, you fools!” he cried, and was gone.

These are the last words of Gandalf before he slides into the abyss beneath the Bridge of Kahzad-Dum. In all my fourteen years, no words had ever pierced me so.

Our junior high teacher read The Hobbit to us as an after-lunch treat. We loved it. But he challenged us that the really good stuff was to be found in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In ninth grade, I took up his challenge. At first it was quite a slog. There were all those long songs, and so much talking! “The Council of Elrond” was the thickest chapter I had ever attempted. It took me days. But when at last the Fellowship engaged the quest to destroy the Ring, things picked up.

‘Fly, You Fools’

One Friday night, I skipped my usual ABC sitcoms and just read on the couch. The watcher in the water outside of the Mines of Moria terrified me. I had to read on.

I stayed with it all through “A Journey in the Dark.” It wasn’t a school night, so my parents didn’t send me to bed as I started one more chapter. The future writer in me was thrilled when the company finds a decaying book in which the deeds of the dwarves in Moria were recorded until their last hour. The scribe’s writing trails off with the ominous “They are coming . . .” My heart pounded as the Fellowship realizes they are trapped like the dwarves of old and will have to fight their way out.

Near disaster follows upon near disaster. Even Frodo is stabbed with a spear that should kill him. But his hidden shirt of mithril silver turns away the lethal point. This is how it’s supposed to go. Against impossible odds, heroes still triumph. So when Gandalf faces the demon Balrog on the last bridge out, I felt sure he would win. It seemed like he had. Three times the wizard commands, “You cannot pass.” Then Gandalf’s power breaks the bridge right where the Balrog stands, and the demon falls into the darkness below.

“Yes!” I shouted silently. Then, “Noooo!” For the plummeting Balrog swings its whip and snares Gandalf’s legs. Tolkien writes, “He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, then slid into the abyss. ‘Fly, you fools!’ he cried, and was gone.”

Wounded by a Sentence

I was totally shocked. Stabbed. My favorite character had died (so it seemed). It cut. It hurt more than I imagined a book, a single sentence, could make me feel. I wanted to howl. Yet, at the very same time, I loved it. I didn’t know one could experience this depth of emotion from reading. So terrible and so beautiful. Gandalf slid into the abyss. Gandalf was gone. I could hardly stand it.

I was only newly awake to Christ, so I felt, but did not consciously notice, the gospel implications in this scene. Through the following years, Tolkien himself would teach me some deeper meanings of this sentence.

Sorrow follows wherever sin remains.

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien laid the foundation for his entire legendarium. In this mythic world, the Creator, Ilúvatar, brings the world into being through themes of great music. But
one of the Creator’s angelic beings, Melkor, wants to create music of his own.

Seeking his own glory, Melkor begins to sing a theme contrary to the music of Ilúvatar. Discordant notes bring turbulence to the good creation. Ilúvatar allows this chaos to rage for a long time until it seems beyond repair. Then Ilúvatar rises and declares another theme of music. This new music is “deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came” (The Silmarillion, 1977, pp. 16–17). The Creator weaves disharmony into more wondrous music. The new song incorporates sadness.

“Sin sank the arrow of sadness into the very heart of all that is.”

We feel this sorrow underneath all the goodness we love in this present world. Sorrow flows through the deeps of creation because created beings sought glory of themselves over against the Creator. In short, sin sank the arrow of sadness into the very heart of all that is. I’m reminded of the days of Noah, when the Lord beheld the wickedness of man. “The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6).

The sadness that struck me that night as I read of Gandalf’s fall partook of this primal sorrow. My heart cried first, It’s not supposed to be this way! The good and wise are not supposed to be overcome by evil. And second, It didn’t have to be this way! Gandalf had already defeated the Balrog. But evil never concedes. The Balrog’s whip could so easily have missed. Instead, evil once more begat sorrow.

Our freely chosen sin over time hardens into malice. The result is loss and harm that weaves a song of lament woven through everything. Even our God feels it. That night I tasted its bitterness.

Sacrifice often breeds redemption.

Gandalf descends into the abyss. Grief dismays the company. They don’t know how they can go on. But they do. The story does not end with this shocking loss.

The wizard’s gruff but affectionate final words rouse the Fellowship from the paralysis of horror. Even as they weep, they dash safely out of Moria. Gandalf’s sacrifice has opened the way for them to escape and to carry on the quest. But more: his gift now impels them to find courage beyond grief, to kindle hope in the darkness ahead and to hold to the cliff’s edge of faith until the very end. The remaining eight members go on to sacrifice mightily for one another.

“Suffering in love for another is redemptive. Evil does not have the last word.”

One’s giving his life for many is the heart of our faith: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). This sacrifice is meant to change the course of our lives, for “he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:15). Suffering in love for another is redemptive. Evil does not have the last word.

The evil chance of the Balrog’s whip snaring Gandalf does not void the wizard’s sacrifice. Gandalf’s giving of his life bears the immediate result of the Fellowship’s escape. But that leads to the whole redemptive resolution with which The Lord of the Rings concludes, a victory for which Tolkien would coin a beautiful word.

In the end, expect eucatastrophe.

I would have to read on to learn of Gandalf’s return. And go further still to see the Ring destroyed, the rightful king enthroned, and Middle-Earth restored. But the sacrifice of Gandalf, in all its shocking, piercing sadness, yet laid down a hope in me. This seed of love buried in Moria’s abyss would yield the fruit of life. I had to believe that.

Tolkien used the word eucatastrophe to express the sudden reversal in a story that leads to a longed-for but unexpected happy ending. This is the resolution against all odds that stirs hope in the human heart that the world’s destiny will not be the death and destruction toward which it appears to rush. Tolkien wrote in a letter to his son that the eucatastrophe in a story

pierces you with a joy that brings tears. . . . It produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature . . . feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives . . . that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our souls were made. . . . The Resurrection was the greatest eucatastrophe possible . . . and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1976, p. 100)

The hope I felt even as I was stabbed with grief at Gandalf’s fall foreshadowed the great reversal of the entire story.

Gandalf Rose and Laughed

Delightfully, we see this deepest truth in the humble simplicity of Sam Gamgee. After the Ring is destroyed, Sam awakes to see Gandalf smiling on him. He exclaims,

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great Shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land. (The Return of the King, 1976, p. 988)

Reading of Gandalf’s fall that night struck me with the full force of the deep truth in every story of redemption. Each one is a shadow of the one true Story. Christ died. He entered the full stop of being lost in the abyss. And then he rose, changing everything.

When Gandalf fell, though I could not say it then, my heart was struck with the sorrow of man in his death and ruin. But the Fellowship carried on. I would read on. The Quest was not thwarted. Gandalf would rise. So will we. In a world restored, where everything sad comes untrue.