Some Christians today might be surprised to learn that the apostles command us, five times, to “greet [each other] with a holy kiss” (Romans 16:16; 1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:26; or “kiss of love,” 1 Peter 5:14). Really? How’s that supposed to work? When you arrive at church? When you cross paths during the week? And is it okay that many of us today, at least in my Christian circles, are not obeying this command? Or are we?

Previously, we surveyed a theology of kissing by tracing the theme across the Old Testament and identifying a key takeaway for the church age. We then turned to the two signature instances of kissing in the New Testament, both of them in the life of Christ: the holy kisses of one “woman of the city,” from a heart of love and worship (Luke 7:37–38), and the unholy kiss of betrayal from one of Jesus’s own disciples (Luke 22:47–48).

In this scriptural context, then, how do we understand the apostles’ charge about the holy kiss, and how might we apply it today across the stretches of our varying times and customs?

We Are Family

First and foremost, one of the main contributions of the survey was the familial (rather than romantic) nature of kissing in both ancient Israel and the early church. A massive and easily overlooked assumption beneath the apostles’ charge is the familial claim implicit in such instruction. Christ came to create a social reality that transcends that of blood relatives. He came to establish and build his church, as not only a people who receive his grace and salvation but as a family joined together to him, the elder brother, and through him, to the Father, by faith.

The holy-kiss charge communicates more than simply the implicit “we are family” as brothers and sisters in Christ, but we should not ignore this remarkable reality, nor a second truth which flows from it.

We Love Each Other

Not only are we, in Christ, family in fact, but we also are to be familial in affection. That is, we come to be like King David, not only in our words and acts but in our affections, when he says of fellow believers in Psalm 16:3,

As for the saints in the land,they are the excellent ones,in whom is all my delight.

As sinners ourselves, we often find fellow Christians to be some of the hardest people to love. But in our new selves, by the Spirit, the saints — our fellows in Christ, joined also to him — become our delight. However strange and quirky and annoying and difficult, however foolish and weak by the world’s standards (1 Corinthians 1:26–29), we learn to see our family members in Christ, despite their many flaws, as “excellent ones.”

We might then check ourselves with every “holy kiss,” whether a literal kiss (if acceptable still in some places) or in every kind word of greeting, expression of affection, handshake, or hug to a fellow Christian: Do I really manifest the new birth I have in Jesus, the heart that first loves God and also loves those who too have been born of him (1 John 5:1)? Are my demonstrations of affection toward other believers sincere expressions of love? Are my greetings holy, like that of the redeemed “woman of the city” in Luke 7? Or are they deceptive, even conniving, and unholy like the Judas kiss?

“The holy-kiss charge is a rebuke to any who claim Christ and yet nurse a hard heart toward his people.”

When affectionate ways of greeting one another in Christ become our norm, we may notice more readily emerging breaches in relationship. When we newly feel hesitant to embrace, say, some fellow believer (or extend a handshake, heartfelt word, or warm smile), that may indicate some unaddressed issue that needs attention and resolution (at least in our own hearts). Just as it’s hard to sincerely pray for someone while remaining angry at him, it would likewise be hard to give someone a “holy kiss” (or whatever culturally appropriate sign) while harboring bitterness.

Reticence to kiss between spouses may signal unresolved issues in a marriage. So too, in our churches, reticence to greet each other with manifest and unqualified warmth may signal a problem (and lead us to revisit Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 5:23–24). This leads to a third and final truth informing how we think of, and apply, the holy kiss today.

We Love with Sincerity

Surely, “the holy kiss” meant, at least, kissing without lust. But again, kissing in the ancient world (and in Scripture) was far more familial than romantic. And very likely, at the end of five New Testament Epistles, the emphasis is not as much on the charge to kiss, as if early believers were not greeting each other with kisses and needed to introduce this new act. Rather, the emphasis, given that the kiss of greeting was already common and assumed, was that early Christians do so, unlike Judas, with holiness. Greet each other, as family, and without sin.

In other words, express your affection with sincerity, not pretense. When you greet each other, in word or deed, mean it. Don’t flatter or deceive. But first and foremost, genuinely love one another from the heart, as family, brothers and sisters in Christ; then express it genuinely.

No Judas Kisses

Perhaps often overlooked, against the background of Scripture’s most infamous kiss, is the charge to holiness and sincerity in our demonstrations of affection to our fellows in Christ. Imagine how Judas’s unholy peck of betrayal would have freshly dominated the connotations of the kiss for early Christians.

The apostles’ charge for holy kisses means, at least, “Let there be no Judases among us.” Not in the church. Heaven, forbid it. May we never leverage the familial trust of our shared faith in Christ to deceive, use, trick, or exploit other Christians.

So, we resolve with every “holy kiss” not to betray or backstab each other, not to “bite and devour one another” (Galatians 5:15). Rather, we resolve to serve each other, be loyal to each other, love each other in ways that show the world, the flesh, and the devil what kisses are for — not to con or manipulate but to convey heartfelt affection. We greet each other, as family, with sincere love — and resolve to live consistently with our greetings.

Holy Kisses Today

Christians today, in our differing times and cultures, can feel the freedom not to greet each other with literal kisses. But some still may. And regardless, we are enjoined to greet each other — and not without holiness — whether with a hug, handshake, heartfelt word, or whatever similar expression. And perhaps our lingering today over the repeated holy-kiss charge will remind us how important it is to cultivate, and express, affection for our fellows in Christ, who are family, even deeper and more enduringly so than blood relatives.

The holy-kiss charge is a rebuke to any who would claim Christ and yet nurse a critical disposition toward his people. It exposes the folly of Christians who would claim to love our brother Jesus but find his other brothers and sisters merely annoying, or maddening, or to be flattered or exploited.

The holy kiss also reminds us of an important dynamic in corporate worship, to ready our hearts for each Sunday. Indeed, we gather to worship Jesus — and we gather that we might do so together.

Which might lead to an application almost as uncomfortable to modern people as a kiss of greeting: slowing down. What if we considered how hurried we are before and after worship — how late to arrive before the call to worship, and how quick to rush off to lunch or the next event?

We will hardly greet each other with sincere expressions of holy, familial affection without the time and space to greet each other at all.

There seems to be no way out.

She knows such bitter, biting thoughts are wrong, shameful even, but her friend’s comment cut so deeply. Her mind keeps returning to the moment, reliving the wound. She tries, feebly, to turn her thoughts elsewhere, but the offense seems to surround her like a fog. And how do you fight a fog?

He too is well aware that he’s walking down a worthless path. He’s been here before — this thought, leading to that fantasy, producing these seemingly unconquerable desires. Maybe he could have escaped if he had turned around right away, but he feels he has gone too far now. He has plucked and felt the fruit; how can he not now taste it?

No way out. Who hasn’t felt the force of these words in the midst of bitterness, lust, or a thousand other temptations? And who hasn’t succumbed to their dark suggestion? If some lies have slain their thousands, this lie has slain its ten thousands.

Every Temptation Escapable

We are hardly the first to feel trapped, surrounded, hemmed in by the power of sin. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians suggests they felt the same.

To be fair, the Corinthians had more reason than most to see their temptations as especially intense. Few cities were as inhospitable to holiness as ancient Corinth. Boastful, lustful, idolatrous, vain, Corinthian sin walked every street and stood on every corner. Many in the church apparently felt pressed beyond their powers of endurance; they felt pushed down the hallway of temptation until the only door they could see read sin. There seemed to be no way out.

But there was. Paul, knowing the unique pressures they faced, boldly writes,

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Every temptation is escapable — small temptations and big temptations, daytime temptations and nighttime temptations, familiar temptations and foreign temptations, inward temptations and outward temptations. All along the hallway, God builds a doorway of escape — even right next to the doorway of sin. And though the door may become harder to enter the farther we travel down the hallway, it is always open for those who will turn the handle.

The bitter thought can be dispelled; the lustful desire denied. Sin is never inevitable.

Our Way Out

How, then, do we find and take the way of escape? How do we stop in the thick of a tempting thought and open the door God has given? On the one hand, simply believing, bone deep, that every temptation has an escape will take us a long way: those who assume there’s no door will hardly go looking for one; those who do may stir themselves up to search.

But we can also say more. In our passage, Paul offers four doors out of temptation — or, perhaps better, four parts of the one door always available: No temptation is unique. You’re more frail than you think. Escape may be hard. God won’t flee.

No temptation is unique.

Perhaps surprisingly, Paul frames his exhortation with four stories of sin and punishment from Exodus and Numbers (1 Corinthians 10:7–10). Israel’s idolatry, sexual immorality, testing of the Lord, and grumbling, along with the judgment God brought, “were written down for our instruction,” Paul says (1 Corinthians 10:11). Specifically, they were written down to keep us from sin (1 Corinthians 10:6).

How do such stories pave our way of escape? In at least two ways. First, they not only tell us, but show us, that the wages of sin really is death (Romans 6:23). “Twenty-three thousand fell in a single day”; “Some . . . were destroyed by serpents”; “Some . . . were destroyed by the Destroyer” (1 Corinthians 10:8–10). The judgments of God, rightly grasped, cannot help but sober those tempted to follow the same sinful path.

Second, such stories dismiss the lie that our temptations are somehow unique. Sin would have us feel that we live on a spiritual island. Others may struggle with doubt, but not this kind of doubt. Others may battle anger, but not anger this strong. Others may deal with discontentment, but they don’t have reasons like mine. To which Paul says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man” (1 Corinthians 10:13). There is nothing new under sin.

Whatever pressure or pull we feel, saints past and present have felt the same. And God promises to all: there is a way out.

You’re more frail than you think.

Often, we advance farther and farther down temptation’s hallway because we think, at the start, that we won’t. The bitter thought comes, and instead of praying it to death, she indulges it, desperate to replay the scene just once or twice. The image enters his head, and rather than rising from bed or running away, he lingers, thinking he can handle it fine. How easily we wander near forbidden trees, forgetting that those who do so usually trip on the roots.

“One of our best escapes from temptation is a keen sense of our own frailty.”

One of our best escapes from temptation, then, is a keen sense of our own frailty. And so, Paul, after citing the four sins from Israel’s history, writes, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). Take heed always, and especially when you think you don’t need to. For the surest way to fall is to presume that you won’t.

Of course, those who do begin down temptation’s hallway can still escape — even at sin’s very threshold. But the humble know that every step forward will make steps backward harder. So they take heed at the very start — asking for help, rehearsing promises, running to prayer, fearing delay.

Escape may be hard.

Beware of imagining, however, that the way of escape will feel easy to take, even at temptation’s start. It often won’t. We might have expected — we might have wished — Paul to write, “With the temptation [God] will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to escape it.” Instead, he writes, “. . . that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). Sometimes, taking the way of escape brings immediate relief; other times, it feels like patient, prolonged endurance.

We may find, with Jesus, that saying no to one temptation simply brings another, stronger temptation (Matthew 4:1–11). Or we may find, as God warned Cain, that sin is far more wild than tame, answering not to soft resistance but only to sustained force (Genesis 4:7). We may need to say no and keep saying it. We may need to renounce a thought and then wrench our minds away. We may need to physically kneel or audibly preach the truth to our distorted desires. In whatever case, we will need to endure.

John Owen offers a graphic picture of what resisting sin may require: “Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts” (Works of John Owen, 6:14). Sometimes, taking God’s way of escape feels like trampling desires that don’t want to die.

God won’t flee.

Ultimately, our escape from temptation rests not on our endurance, our caution, or our familiarity with Scripture, but on God’s unfailing faithfulness. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability” (1 Corinthians 10:13). The waves of temptation, however high or strong, have a God-decreed shoreline. So, rage and foam as they may, God has pledged his own faithfulness to this assurance: they will not overcome your God-given ability to endure.

“The waves of temptation, however high or strong, have a God-decreed shoreline.”

If we had no faithful God in heaven — if resisting sin rested on our own resources — we would rightly see temptation as beyond our ability to endure. We would rightly roll over and let ourselves be swept away, giving in to the inevitability of it all. But as long as God is faithful (always and forever), no temptation will be too strong, too alluring, too overpowering for his people to escape.

Paul’s assurance of God’s faithfulness recalls the letter’s opening, where he writes, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9). If God has called you into the fellowship of his Son, he will keep you in the fellowship of his Son. However pleasurable, however powerful, however compelling temptation feels, Jesus ultimately will prove more so. His fellowship will out-satisfy the fellowship of sin and out-conquer the force of temptation. He himself will be our escape, and the one to whom we gladly run.

Recently, as I watched my eleven-month-old make a mad dash for the open dishwasher, it struck me as remarkably similar to how we can approach God in prayer. Our hearts, like my son’s hands, desire to have, hold, and enjoy. Earthly objects appear good and precious before us. We reach for them through prayer — unaware of whether we reach for a spoon or a knife.

The God to whom we pray is our sovereign and kind Father. He cares whether his material gifts do service or harm to his children’s souls, and he truly knows the difference between spoons and knives, bread and stones, fish and serpents (Matthew 7:9–11). So, whenever necessary, his love says, “No.” His hands gently pull us back, shutting the door.

All the while, he assures us that he is not a Father who delights to withhold but to fulfill — fully, finally, and forever, with the only Object in all existence that can really satisfy us: himself (Psalm 16:11). Here I am; here is fullness of joy. What you wanted would have hurt you by giving you less of me. Fear not. I have not withheld myself. You shall be full.

But we are often too busy wandering around the base of a dishwasher to hear him.

Pray for God

Do you feel like one prayer after another is going unanswered? Is prayer an exercise in disappointment, sorrow, or even bitterness — not faith, fellowship, and joy? Jesus sees you, and he wants to free you from experiencing prayer as frustration. But to do that, he will ask you to stop asking mostly for more of his gifts. He will ask you to ask ultimately for more of him.

He says the same to all his sheep: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Goods and kindred will not do. The good shepherd does not make us lie down in green pastures so that we can become sick on grass. Times of comfort, along with valleys of death, are for communion with Christ. He alone knows how much is too much — of both ease and affliction.

Our prayer life reveals whether our spiritual taste buds prefer certain circumstances above everlasting satisfaction in Christ, the Bread of Life and Living Water (John 6:35; 4:10). As J.I. Packer puts it, “I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face” (My Path of Prayer, 56). Does prayer mostly leave us hungry for any goods we didn’t get? Or, whatever the outcome, is it satisfying enough for us to know that as we pour out our hearts in prayer (Psalm 62:8), we pour them out to a Father infinitely more invested in those hearts than even we are?

Our nearsighted, half-hearted requests do not surprise him. He has given us a way to steer our prayers and, with them, our desires aright: “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). In When I Don’t Desire God, John Piper paraphrases Jesus’s words this way: “In all your asking look for the fullness of joy in me. In this way all your asking will glorify me” (148). Whatever you request, request it with an eye to lasting delight — request it with an eye to getting more of me, whatever else you may get.

In response to prayers for God to glorify himself by satisfying us in himself, his answer is as timeless as his Son: yes. Jesus says so: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). If whatever you wish is that your joy would be full — that you would get God, come what may — that wish will be granted. It simply will.

“Prayer cannot survive by prayer alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Not by a genie, but by a Father who gave his only Son so that you could and would believe in him (John 3:16). Be satisfied in him. Trust him. Treasure him. Genies give gifts. God gives himself (even in his gifts). He gives exceeding joy and gets exceeding glory for being our exceeding joy. The more we pray to this end, the more our prayers will be answered, and the less we will sit sullen and confused before an over-rubbed lamp (or before a dishwasher, in my son’s case).

Hear to Speak

Notice the all-important if in Jesus’s words in John 15:7: “If . . . my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” If our prayers are going to power joy in Christ, Christ’s words must power our prayers. And if his words are going to power our prayers, we must open our Bibles.

So often, our prayer-problems (and therefore our joy-problems) begin not with delayed speech but with impaired hearing. Whether in the midst of Eden or east of it, humans have never started conversations with God, but he with us. Stop at any point in redemptive history, and you will find God already there — speaking.

Every atom in existence, especially those that form you and me, can be traced back to the One who said, “Let . . .” When Adam and Eve fell and then tried to flee, God’s voice chased after them: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Though he cast humankind from his holy presence, still he would not cease to reveal himself to us. Now he would do so “by the word of the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:21). In time, this Word would miraculously take on flesh and dwell among us (John 1:14). Today, anytime Christians pray in faith, it is because Christ the Word already dwells richly in us by his Spirit.

So, prayers spoken in faith do begin not with our mouths but with our ears and remain in lifelong orbit insofar as the Scriptures, and therefore the Son, remain at the center of the Christian solar system. Prayer cannot survive by prayer alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).

Psalm 56 illustrates this powerful pattern of God’s words drawing out our words. As David composed this poem, he lay captive to the Philistines. Yet David’s danger strengthened, rather than squashed, his resolve to pray: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (verse 3). David is afraid, so David is praying. And the reason David is praying is because David has been hearing: “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (verse 4). The praiseworthy word of God is the basis for David’s deep trust in God. And so he prays.

Our own voices will cry out like David, “God, I trust you!” to the degree that our hearts grasp the utter trustworthiness of God like David. Also like David, only God’s own voice can draw such trust and its attendant prayerfulness out of us. When we try to pray from thin air, our minds feel fuzzy, and our voices are quick to crack. But when we pray in response to and alongside God’s voice — it’s like going from ten thousand feet above sea level to standing on the shore. Our prayers will enjoy enough oxygen to last a lifetime.

Impossible Prayers

Whether we’ve walked with God for one year or fifty, no one is above lessons in prayer. Just as the first disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1), so should we. Left to ourselves, our prayers tend to trail the path of unbelieving prayers, requests that flow from hearts interested only in getting gifts (James 4:3), not in getting the Giver himself within every gift (James 1:17).

If we want our prayers to be a means to unshakable soul-joy, we will ask God to do what he wants within all our wants. And if we want God’s wants to become ours, we will learn the words and lean into the Spirit of the only Man who desired and delighted in God perfectly all the days of his life.

If we pause for a moment to check the pulse of our own delight in God, we may be tempted to tremble with the twelve disciples. “Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25). But such fear is only for those who would refuse the God-appointed means to making the impossible possible: prayer. Ultimately, we cannot think, read, or even meditate our way to joy in God. Joy in God is a gift from God. If we are to have it, we must ask God for it. We must pray.

As we imperfectly pursue him, he will perfectly answer our prayers for earthly circumstances and material goods. We will watch him direct scalpels and OBs, provide last-minute funds and 24/7 friends. We will marvel as he restores broken marriages, returns wayward children, and resets quarreling churches. May we never doubt our Father’s eagerness to hear from us and give to us (Matthew 7:11).

But our Father is not mostly concerned with preserving his children’s comforts. No, he is dead set on safeguarding his children’s souls. The Hound of Heaven will not be reduced to Earth’s Vending Machine (or a Divine Dishwasher). Hallelujah! We cannot tell whether what we request is a spiritual razor blade or a rich blessing. But our sovereign and saving God can. He will give only what is good for us and glorifying to him — everything we need for our joy in him to be full.