Audio Transcript

Happy Memorial Day today for those of you here in the States. Last time, we looked at the sanctifying power of Christ on the cross. That was episode 2048. In our Bible reading together, we’ve been reading Mark 15 recently, about the death of Christ. It’s been a theme for us. And today we return to the cross by doing something different, Pastor John. I want you to respond to a viral video clip going around from a pretty well-known actor named Shia LaBeouf. He’s 37. He was converted to Roman Catholicism in recent years. He starred in the 2022 film Padre Pio, a movie named after a Catholic priest, mystic, and so-called venerated saint. Not long ago, in an interview, the actor was discussing the connection between Christ’s suffering and joy, and it generated some emails for you, all asking for your response.

Before we get to what he said, let me footnote a few caveats. It should be first said that the New Testament never speaks of individuals as saints. That’s a Catholic myth. Saints is a corporate title for all Christians. And I’m unsure if this actor understands the gospel, that Christ paid for the guilt of our sin by satisfying the wrath of God. He tends to speak of the cross as more of a moral model — Christ died mainly as an example for us. And he’s obviously very comfortable with images of Christ — crucifixes and paintings. Those are several factors I want to acknowledge at the front end of this episode and set aside for now. I don’t want to get into any of those.

As Shia spoke, my mind went to Hebrews 12:2 — a text you’ve brought up in 25 episodes on the podcast over the years, Pastor John, so I can see why listeners want you to weigh in and respond to what was said. I’ll read what he said and then ask you, on behalf of those listeners who emailed, What does this actor get right and what does he get wrong about the joy of Christ on the cross? Here’s what he said.

When I look at Christ on the cross, I think, hmm, is that a joyful man as he bleeds out and dies on a cross for humanity? Is that man joyful? And I think the answer is yes, that even in his suffering — that’s what Christ represents for me: meaningful suffering. The story of Christ is that God became man for our betterment. So, that means that he is the ultimate example, the supreme priest, the ultimate redeemer. If I look at Christ on the cross, I think, That’s very instructive. You don’t see a lot of smiley-face Christs on the cross. You don’t see Christ on the cross dying and laughing with aplomb — in joy, in ultimate joy. But I think they should make some Christs on the cross in ultimate serenity and ultimate joy. They always make this sad face. And that seems stupid. It seems like it’s not deep enough, like the artists who manufacture those crucifixes — it’s almost like they’re not seeing the full story. And the full story, I believe, is that Christ is in maximum joy in that moment. He is fully in his purpose. If you can tap into how you can use your suffering to help other people, that is maximum joy.

What strikes you?

What strikes me first is that I’m not sure what he means by joy and what he means by suffering even. It’s hard to respond with a clear yes or no to what he’s saying when he seems to switch categories on me. I’ll try to point out what I mean by this ambiguity by suggesting several positive responses. So, I’ll try to be positive before I’m negative.

Christ’s Purposeful Suffering

For example, he uses the phrase “meaningful suffering,” and I can’t escape the impression that he might mean that this phrase “meaningful suffering” is synonymous with “joyful suffering.” He says, “Is that man on the cross joyful? And I think the answer is yes, that even in his suffering — that’s what Christ represents for me: meaningful suffering.” So, he switches. He switches from joyful to meaningful, which is what throws me.

“What sustained Jesus was a confidently expected future experience of joy.”

Well, Christ’s suffering certainly was meaningful, right? Everybody would agree with that. Oh my goodness! His suffering carried more meaning in it than all the suffering of all the human beings in the world combined, because it carried in it the salvation of millions of people that nobody else’s suffering could do. So, that’s absolutely right: the suffering of Christ was not meaningless; it was infinitely meaningful. And if that’s what he means by joyful, it’s hard to disagree.

I see at least two other things that are positive. He says that Christ, at that moment of suffering, “is fully in his purpose.” That’s almost the same as saying that the suffering was meaningful — that is, it was fully purposeful. He was not being frustrated at that moment in his designs. He was accomplishing exactly what he came to do. Indeed, it is a satisfying thing to accomplish what you were designed to do. We all would agree with that. I’m doing what I was made to do. I’m doing what I came to do.

Then he applies that to us, and he says, “If you can tap into how you can use your suffering to help other people, that is maximum joy.” Well, the true part of that is that Jesus did say, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Living to make others glad in God is certainly a glad way of living, even through suffering.

When Is Maximum Joy?

But the question I have at this point is whether the moment of suffering is the moment of maximum joy. That’s my question. One biblical obstacle to thinking that way is Hebrews 12:2, which says, “Jesus . . . for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” Notice that it does not locate the pinnacle of Jesus’s joy at the point of the cross, but on the other side of the cross. At the cross, the joy “was set before him.”

To be sure, Hebrews 11:1 teaches that, by faith, the substance of things hoped for — the substance of that future joy — can be tasted now. Yes, it can and is, even in our suffering. But that does not change the fact that the text says that what sustained Jesus was a confidently expected future experience of joy, whatever partial measure of it he might have tasted on the cross.

Another biblical factor that we have to, I think, take into account is that there are different kinds of experiences of joy and different degrees of joy, and not just because of sin. I don’t think joy goes up and down only because sin enters in. For example, in Luke 15:7 we are told that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who don’t need repentance. So, there’s very great joy in heaven, and there’s great joy in heaven — more joy and less more. And it’s not because there’s sin in heaven. There is no sin in heaven; that’s not what causes the difference.

So, it’s fair to say, isn’t it, that the sinless Christ may have tasted a kind of joy and a degree of joy as he suffered on the cross, but that there was a much fuller joy of a different kind even yet to be experienced beyond the cross.

It seems to me that Shia LaBeouf may be saying too much when he writes that some crucifixes should depict “ultimate serenity and ultimate joy.” I think any ordinary use of the word serenity would simply not fit the hours of Jesus’s horrific suffering. I just don’t think serenity is what you would see, nor should you explain it with that word. I think that would diminish the reality of his agony. I think to use the word ultimate to describe his joy is probably a failure to take into account that there will be more joy on the other side of death and resurrection and ascension.

Maintaining Mystery

Another biblical problem I have is that I think there’s probably a greater mystery at the moment of propitiation on the cross than he realizes. When Jesus says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” that is the cry of the damned (Matthew 27:46). He is at that moment experiencing the outpouring of the wrath of God upon the sin of all his people. And I say it is a mystery because I don’t think we can give a sufficient account for how he can experience that damnation and joy simultaneously — at least, I don’t feel competent to rise to that level of sufficient explanation of what happened in that moment in the heart and mind of our Lord Jesus.

I’m not saying it’s impossible; I’m saying we need to tread very carefully here so as to give full measure to Christ’s mental and spiritual agony under the Father’s displeasure, even as we try to give proper measure to the fact that in himself Jesus had a clear conscience, and he was doing the absolutely right thing. It was meaningful; it was purposeful; it was the loving thing to do.

Maybe I should say one more thing before we stop our reflections. The mystery of Christ’s experience — indeed, the Father’s experience as Christ died on the cross — is expressed, I think, in Ephesians 5:2 in another way. Paul says, “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” A fragrant offering? Fragrant? Sweet smelling? Pleasing smelling? I take that to mean that God the Father was able, in some mysterious way, to pour out wrath on his beloved Son and know at the same time with approval that this sacrifice was beautiful, fragrant, pleasing, righteous, glorious — achieving everything that the two of them had designed and intended.

So, in summary, what I’m pleading for is a careful expression of the reality of Jesus’s suffering, the reality of being damned and forsaken, the reality of knowing that more joy lay ahead — all of that to temper any effort to describe the Lord’s experience on the cross as “ultimate joy.”

Audio Transcript

We end week number 500 on the podcast today, and we end it with a sharp Bible question from a listener named Derek, who lives in Seattle. “Pastor John, hello! I have a Bible question for you about the new birth. Peter wrote that believers are born again ‘not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God’ (1 Peter 1:23). In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, ‘Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God’ (John 3:5). Can you help me understand the truth that these verses are totally compatible? Romans 10:17 and James 1:21 also mention the saving power of the word heard and implanted, but surely not in a way that minimizes the work of the Holy Spirit. The question then follows: How do the Holy Spirit and the word of God collaborate in the new birth?”

Great question. Well, let’s start by reminding ourselves that the reason we must be born again in order to see the kingdom of God, like Jesus says, is because by nature, by birth, we are all spiritually dead. This is the way Paul describes it in Ephesians 2:5: “Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ.” Now, that making alive is the same as the new birth, said in different language.

Every human being has fallen in Adam and comes into the world without any saving spiritual life at all. We are dead. We are by nature resistant to God. We do not submit to him by nature. We value things that he has made more than him by nature. And we do not have the spiritual capacities to see Christ as supremely valuable and true and better than anything in the world. Nothing of that do we have by nature.

Unless we feel the weight of the lostness and fallenness and deadness of all humans, especially ourselves, nothing about the new birth is going to make sense in the New Testament. So, all of that means that if we’re going to live, if we’re going to know God, if we’re going to be happy forever, we must have new life — that is, new birth, new creation.

Born of the Spirit

So what Derek is asking now is how the Spirit of God and the word of God function together to bring us out of this deadness into the new, eternal life of knowing and enjoying God forever. And Derek refers to the words of Jesus in John 3:3, 6–8. Jesus said to Nicodemus,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. . . . That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I say to you, “You must be born again.” The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

So, to be born of the flesh is the first birth that we’ve all experienced. If you are alive, you were born. And he says that to be born first in that way is to be no more than a fallen human being. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” That’s all it is. Something more must happen for us if we are to enter the kingdom of God, and Jesus describes that more as a birth by the Spirit.

And then he compares the work of the Spirit in the new birth to the blowing of the wind (John 6:8) , which means the Spirit is as free and as mysterious in his regenerating new-birth work as the unseen wind. You don’t control the wind. You don’t make the wind come. You don’t make the wind go. It just comes. It goes. It does what it does, and that’s the way it is with God’s sovereign Spirit in whom he makes alive and gives new birth.

“We didn’t make our first birth. We don’t make our second birth.”

We didn’t make our first birth. We don’t make our second birth. We don’t raise ourselves from the dead. We don’t create new life in our souls. It is a gift. It’s a miracle of God. We don’t initiate it. We don’t control it. It’s the sovereign mysterious work of the Holy Spirit of God.

First Cry of Faith

Our first conscious experience of this new birth is the arising in our hearts of faith in Christ. You might say that the first cry of the newborn Christian infant is the cry of faith. Instead of “waa, waa,” the heart feels, “I see him; he’s beautiful. I love him, I want him, I need him. He’s my Savior!” That’s the cry of the new birth. And Paul says, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). So that baby cries, “Jesus is my Lord!” And he says that the evidence of the Holy Spirit coming into our lives is that we cry, “Abba, Father!” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6).

So, even though the work of the Holy Spirit is unseen and outside our control, the evidence of his work is manifest. We see the glory of Christ as desirable and believable, and we embrace him as our Savior, our Lord, our treasure. That’s the evidence of the new birth in our life. Christ is now real, and precious, and trustworthy to us, and authoritative for us. We have been made alive, born again. That’s the work of the Spirit.

“Even though the work of the Holy Spirit is unseen and outside our control, the evidence of his work is manifest.”

But now you can see right away, by the very nature of what’s happened, that this implies something about the word. If we are now believing in Jesus because of our new birth, and that’s the first cry of the newborn, and we are seeing him as true and real and valuable, where do we see him?

Born Through the Word

The Holy Spirit does not whisper the gospel in our ear. We have to hear about him in the gospel. Paul says in Romans 10:17, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” What we learn then is that faith is a work of the Holy Spirit in new birth (Ephesians 2:8–9), and faith is the effect of hearing the word of God. Faith comes from the new birth by the Spirit, and faith comes from the word.

And that’s where 1 Peter 1:23 comes in to connect word and Spirit in the new birth. Peter says, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable [that’s the Spirit of God], through the living and abiding word of God.” Born of the Spirit, born through the word. So, what we see is that the sovereign Spirit of God binds himself to the word of God because his primary work (as Jesus said in John 16:14) is to glorify the Son of God, who is manifest in the preaching of the word of God.

The Holy Spirit does not move willy-nilly, randomly, through the world, touching random people with the new birth who have never heard the gospel, without any reference to the word of God at all. No, he doesn’t do that. He moves in tandem with the preaching of the gospel. And the reason he does is that his primary mission, according to John 16:14, is to glorify the Son of God. And if he just made people alive who’ve never heard of the Son of God, they wouldn’t be glorifying the Son of God with their new life. New life is bound to the word of God because new life is meant to glorify the Son of God, and we hear about the Son of God in the word of God, the gospel.

We see an example of this in Acts 16:14, where Paul is preaching to Lydia and the other women there by the river. It says, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” So, you have the word spoken, preached by a human being (Paul), and you have the divine work of God opening the heart to give heed and to give new life so that she can understand and receive the preciousness of the gospel.

Speak the Word Faithfully

So, the implication for us is that our essential role in salvation is to speak the word of God and then trust the Spirit of God to do the work, the heart-work called the new birth. We don’t cause the new birth in ourselves or in anybody else, and we don’t cause it in those we are preaching the gospel to. The role we have — and it is an absolutely essential role — is to speak faithfully the word of God.

Paul asks in Romans 10:14, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” He answers, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). So, my prayer for us is this: may the Lord give us great boldness and faithfulness and confidence that when we speak the word of God, the Spirit of God will give life and glorify the Son of God through the awakening of faith.

You, like me, have probably watched it happen. A friend or family member gets excited about Jesus, comes alive to his gospel, joins his mission. In their zeal, they make a clean cut with former sins. They gladly associate with God’s church. They evangelize unashamed. They don’t mind looking strange.

But then, slowly, like the Israelites in the wilderness, they begin to cast backward glances, as if Egypt were calling them home. They remember parts of that former life; they want some things back. And though they once didn’t mind looking strange, now they do. They feel drawn to the normal they once knew.

“The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange.”

To bring the point closer to home, you have probably not only watched it happen but felt it happen. Like me, you have probably passed through seasons where you became a little (or a lot) less strange in this world, where you traded your heavenly clothes for garments less conspicuous. You once were quite strange (and happy to be so); then, over time, you became quietly normal.

Christians are, by definition, “sojourners and exiles” in this world (1 Peter 2:11) — strangers. But we do not always live up to the name. We strangers need help staying strange.

Stay Strange

The apostle Peter was a man familiar with strangeness — familiar too with the difficulty of remaining so. As he surveyed his beloved churches, and as he considered his own soul, he saw an array of forces bent on making Christian strangers normal: the unrelenting passions of our flesh (1 Peter 2:11), a surprised and smirking world (1 Peter 4:4), a prowling devil (1 Peter 5:8).

Among these various forces, Peter seems to have been especially sensitive to the normalizing influence of the world — of friends and neighbors and family and coworkers who look at your life and “are surprised” at what you do and don’t do, what you say and don’t say (1 Peter 4:4). As the King James Version puts it, “They think it strange.” They think you strange.

However strong our identity in Christ, Peter knows that quizzical looks, awkward conversations, and constant cultural messaging can take their toll on Christian integrity. The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange. And for that, you need other strangers.

And so, amid his calls to Christian strangeness in 1 Peter 4, he describes the kind of community that keeps and cultivates that strangeness. Granted, Peter knows that not even the healthiest community can prevent all apostasy. But he also knows that if strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world. Only together do we stay strange.

So, over against the passions and patterns of unbelieving society, Peter mentions four features of a faithfully strange community — churches that offer a home on the journey to heaven.

1. Strange Posture

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

In 1 Peter 4:3, Peter lists the kinds of community sins these Christians once enjoyed and that their neighbors still enjoy: “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” His vision of Christian community in verses 7–11 offers an alternative society, a place where such passions are not only renounced but replaced by God-glorifying, soul-dignifying patterns.

The first of these patterns is love — earnest, sincere, sin-covering love. Sinful communities like those of verse 3 may know some kind of friendship or camaraderie; they do not know this kind of love. Nor did we know this kind of love when we were living in “malice and . . . deceit and hypocrisy and envy and . . . slander” (1 Peter 2:1). Back then, we stirred up sin in others and ourselves. Now, however, we cover it.

“Love covers a multitude of sins” means that, when wounded, we forgive, overlook, show mercy, refuse to grow bitter. A brother snubs you; you pray, forgive in your heart, and go on loving him. A sister speaks a shameful word against you; you tell her how that felt, gently restore her, and go on loving her. Some sins we pass over; some we confront — all we cover.

Such love is strange in this world. But every time we practice it, we remind each other of the Christ who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Sin-covering love not only keeps our strange communities together — it also keeps our communities near Christ, whose nearness makes all our strangeness sweet.

2. Strange Place

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

Peter’s charge to cover over sins implies we know each other deeply enough to wound each other deeply. It implies relationship beyond acquaintance and fellowship beyond Sunday. Healthy churches know, with Peter, that gathering once a week does not keep Christians strange. And so, throughout the week, we bring our strange posture into a strange place: our homes.

Hospitality (literally “love of strangers”) may have been more common in Peter’s world than it is in ours (at least in the West), but it was not so common that Peter felt no need to command it. Nor was it so easy that he felt no need to add that phrase “without grumbling.” Then, as now, Christian hospitality came with many costs and temptations to complain. If our love covers a multitude of sins, our hospitality covers a multitude of inconveniences.

But when we open our homes to other Christians, especially to those far different from us, we help make strangers feel a bit more at home. We invite each other into a world where, for an afternoon or evening at least, we feel welcomed, at ease, a stranger among fellow strangers — and therefore a stranger among friends. In the home, we catch a small glimpse of Home, and we leave with a little more courage to stay strange.

If our churches are going to feel like a home for Christian strangers, then we will need to open our actual homes — often and without grumbling.

3. Strange Practice

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Peter 4:10)

When Peter’s readers moved about in the world, they were allotted a certain place and significance. Their society paid close attention to whether someone was high-born or low-born, master or servant, man or woman, old or young — and assigned value accordingly.

But when Peter’s readers moved about in the church, these wildly different people found themselves on spiritually level ground. Without losing their earthly identities (Peter still addresses servants as servants, wives as wives, the younger as the younger), they gained a remarkable equality in Christ. “Each . . . received a gift,” each became a good steward “of God’s varied grace,” and each was called “to serve one another.”

An unbelieving neighbor observing such a church would have seen society unstratified, partiality put away, as low served high and high served low — each a steward of the King. Our own worthy Lord did not count himself too high for foot-washing. And in a hundred ways, with a hundred gifts — teaching, leading, exhorting, giving, administrating — his church continues to upend social expectations and wash unlikely feet.

Such communities still seem strange, even in supposedly egalitarian societies. No matter how much we prize equality, we each (apart from grace) have categories of people we will not gladly serve — or be served by. But when, in the church, our service extends to all and receives from all, we embody the coming kingdom, reflect the coming King, and minister the “varied grace” we need to stay strange.

4. Strange Perspective

The end of all things is at hand. . . . To [God] belong glory and dominion forever and ever. (1 Peter 4:7, 11)

The church’s strange posture, place, and practice cultivate and keep Christian strangeness, but not apart from the strangest quality of all: our perspective. So, Peter begins and ends this passage by flipping forward a few pages in the story, reminding us of history’s next and last chapter. In the end, we stay strange by remembering that we live in the end.

Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ has risen and ascended — and now no major event stands between us and Christ coming again. “The end of all things is at hand”; the end of this world is at hand. And therefore, the end of our strangeness is at hand as well.

“If strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world.”

Faithful Christians cannot help but look strange to unbelievers of all sorts — progressive and conservative, urban and rural, young and old. But that doesn’t mean we fundamentally are strange, not from the standpoint of eternity. No, from the perspective of “forever and ever,” the strangest thing of all is this present world of sin, this God-ignoring age. Such was not the case in eternity past, such is not the case in heaven now, and such will not be the case everywhere soon. “To him belong glory and dominion” — and to him they will always be.

The more eternity rests on our minds, the more this world, which can seem so normal, will begin to look alien, fugitive, dislocated, strange. And so, together, we pray for God’s kingdom to come. We preach and talk of Christ’s return. And we remind each other that this world is not our home. However strange we seem here, we are not strange to God, not strange to the angels, not strange to the cloud of witnesses gone before us.

Stay strange, then, for a few moments longer, for you live on the threshold of home.