That Sunday evening, between the hours of 7:00 and 9:15, is permanently etched into my memory banks. I was 17 and had just arrived in Aberdeen, “The Granite City” (as it has long been known because so many of its buildings and houses are constructed of gray granite).

I was there to begin my studies at the university. I had never seen it before and knew almost nothing about it. But my first duty was already on my mind: “When Sinclair goes to Aberdeen,” an acquaintance of my father had said to him, “tell him to go to hear Willie Still of Gilcomston South Church — he gives great Bible readings.” Following up on that suggestion has left a permanent mark on my life and, I trust, on my ministry.

First Service at the ‘Gilc’

I had never heard of Willie Still and had no idea where Gilcomston South Church might be — “Gilc,” as I later discovered people referred to it. And as for “Bible readings” — I had no real concept of what they were. But having attended morning worship at the college chapel, I walked into the town center to find out where “Gilc” was, came back to my residence for a meal, and returned at the stated hour of 7:00 for the evening service.

Around 7:25, after singing and two prayers, a seemingly elderly, balding figure in the distant pulpit began to read from the Old Testament. He took around half an hour to read through two chapters, interspersing the reading with a variety of fascinating comments (he did not know then, I suspect, that the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for Public Worship frowned on such interruptions to the reading of the sacred text!).

Then we sang a hymn. I stood standing at the end of the last verse, but realized everyone else was sitting down. Assuming this was a signal that instead of a benediction there would be a closing prayer, I bowed my head and closed my eyes. It took only a second or two, however, to realize that the words I was hearing were not the opening words of a prayer but the first words of a sermon. An hour and fifteen minutes later, he pronounced a vigorous “Amen! Let us sing hymn number . . .” — and then, at last, the benediction.

A “Bible Reading,” I realized after a few weeks, was not what Mr. Still had done earlier in the service. It was evangelical speak for systematic exposition, what is traditionally referred to as the lectio continua approach to biblical exposition. That approach is now so common that many have little idea how novel it seemed in the post-war English-speaking world.

I was shy and socially a little awkward (only a little?). It was another eighteen months before I spoke to him for the first time.

Meeting Mr. Still

Born in 1911, Mr. Still became minister of Gilcomston South Church in 1945. He remained there for over fifty years. He was my minister for six years and remained a mentor and friend until his death in 1997.

It would be difficult to calculate what I owe to Mr. Still. We were very differently wired. His preaching style was not one I could have or should have imitated — perhaps mercifully. Because of illness, he had received little or no formal education between his early teens and his mid-twenties. That lacuna left its mark on the way he thought — rarely, it seemed, in a straight logical line, although on many occasions he would follow a biblical-theological line through the whole Bible in order to bring depth to the passage from which he was preaching. I often thought that listening to him was like watching a deep-sea diver disappear into the water, eventually surfacing with a precious pearl in hand.

His conduct of worship was one of his spiritual gifts — “bathed in prayer,” as he often said. The church met for prayer on Saturday evenings, summoned by the weekly Lord’s Day announcement, “The elders will meet for prayer at 7:00 and the congregation at 7:30.” The meeting usually concluded just before ten o’clock in the evening — but in those hours it was often difficult to get a word in edgeways, such was the flow of prayer.

I have sometimes likened that gathering to a helicopter ride round the globe, dropping down in places I had never heard of to intercede for the advance of the kingdom and people of God there. To be in the services the following morning and evening was evidence enough of God drawing near to those who draw near to him. We were, as young students, often bowed down in “wonder, love, and praise” at the end of the services.

“Mr. Still delighted to bring out new treasures, and he never tired of putting again on display treasures that were old.”

It is not possible in brief compass to describe Mr. Still’s ministry in detail. His approach is well summarized in his little book The Work of the Pastor. I have heard numbers of men who never met or heard him comment on this book’s impact on their own ministries. Some of the recurring themes in his preaching are expressed in his Towards Spiritual Maturity, not least what he often referred to as “the three dimensions of the Cross” — Christ’s atoning work dealing with sins (plural), sin (its reign), and Satan (our ultimate enemy). As he liked occasionally to put it, Christ dealt with “the root, the fruit, and the Brute!”

Somehow — I think under the earlier influence of authors probably more pietistic than Reformed — he had grasped the Pauline emphasis on the death and resurrection of Christ as not only the foundation for our justification, but the ground plan and pattern for the whole of the Christian life (“Many deaths and resurrections for us,” as he would have put it). Significantly, his brief autobiographical book is entitled Dying to Live.

Poring Over, Pouring Out

Here there is space to reflect on only one particular lesson that I hope I learned from him — although I should emphasize that this was not because he spoke to me about it with any frequency (he “mentored” not in the modern vogue of “discipling,” but — at least in my own view — in a more biblical pattern of friendship). He modeled for us what it means to pour the word of God into people’s lives. This was the focus of his whole ministry — feeding the flock of God whether in his preaching, pastoral visiting, pastoral counseling, or pastoral writing to and for them.

This last dimension he developed in the congregation’s Monthly Record, which included an extensive pastoral letter, news of the congregation and the much larger “congregation” beyond who were upheld in prayer, and Daily Bible Reading Notes that he wrote himself. By the end of a ministry that extended through six decades, he had probably preached and written his way through the entire Bible three times.

I use the word pour deliberately here. It actually began with his own poring over God’s word. He loved it deeply and obviously. And the poring over of his own study and meditation (never one without the other) emerged in his pouring out what he had learned for himself. In that respect, he was a “scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven,” who “is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). He delighted to bring out new treasures, and he never tired of putting again on display treasures that were old. But what struck me preeminently was the sense that the poring over and the pouring out were conveyed by what I can describe only as a pouring in of God’s word — into the minds and hearts of the congregation he served.

He certainly loved the word and studying it. I think that he did indeed love to preach. We are accustomed to seeing both of these characteristics in many preachers. But on their own, they do not constitute the same quality of pouring in. They lack a third essential ingredient for true ministry — namely, pouring into the people to whom one preaches “the affection of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:8) in the understanding that “the aim of our charge is love,” not merely knowledge (1 Timothy 1:5).

Preaching with Depth

Mr. Still had come to recognize long before I met him that what is requisite for such a ministry is sharing the Pauline experience of being among the people “in weakness and in fear and much trembling” (1 Corinthians 2:3) — a profound, sometimes almost debilitating consciousness of one’s own inadequacies. Paul later calls this experience being “weak in him” (2 Corinthians 13:4) — being weak not apart from him, but precisely because of our union with him. When up close and personal with Mr. Still, this deep costliness of the ministry of the Word was self-evident.

“Mr. Still’s preaching became the chariot on which the presence of the blessed Trinity was carried into our hearts.”

It was this element in ministry, it seems to me, that Paul was describing when he told the Thessalonians that “being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). And it was this element that took Mr. Still’s preaching beyond the level of surface exegesis and analysis of passages of Scripture to evoke the living realities of which they spoke. There was in his exposition of the word of God a manifestation of the truth and a manifestation to the conscience (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:2).

This gave a kind of emotional and affectional depth to his preaching. But more than that, it brought a sense of God himself, of his worshipfulness, into the preaching. The late Jim Packer used to say about Martyn Lloyd-Jones that he had never heard preaching that had “so much of God about it.” What I am describing here belonged to that same order of reality. Mr. Still certainly honored Calvin’s dictum that we give the same reverence to Scripture as we give to God because it is his word.

But (if one may put it this way without being misunderstood) while that was true, he never lost sight of the fact that God himself is not to be reduced to words to be analyzed and discussed in their interrelations, plotlines, and literary structures. He is the One whose throne is in heaven and whose footstool is the earth, the One whose greatness none can fathom, the One whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain — and yet is willing to look to him “who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).

Mr. Still longed for this reality himself and for the congregation to experience it in worship and under the ministry of the word. And thus his preaching became the chariot on which the presence of the blessed Trinity was carried into our hearts. Looking back now with gratitude, I nevertheless believe those days spoiled me. For when we experience this, we can never be satisfied with less.

Written on My Heart

One day when I was a graduate student, Mr. Still gave me something. In itself it was of no real consequence, but having known him for several years as pastor and friend, I said to him, lightheartedly and somewhat teasingly, “You have known me now for several years — but this is the first time you have given me something!” I passed the gift back to him, saying, “You will need to write your autograph on it.” He pointed to the object, brushed it away, and said, gently but clearly conscious I would not doubt the integrity of his words, “That is not where I want to write my autograph.” Then, pointing his finger at my heart, he said, “There is where I want to write it.”

That is what lies behind and is expressed in and through a ministry in which the word of God is poured into the hearts of his people. The ink in which Mr. Still’s ministry has been written into my heart is now dry; but please God, I hope what he wrote will remain clearly legible to the end of my life.

In an age when so many pastoral failures, missteps, and sins are posted for public exhibition, it’s easy to allow our warmth toward the church to grow cold. Through a scrutinizing lens, many scowl at the church with suspicion and sheer amazement that anyone would want to be part of such a seemingly dysfunctional family. Sometimes, the church can seem to be anything but beautiful.

Does Jesus look at the church with the same scowl?

‘You Are Beautiful’

John Gill, an eighteenth-century English Baptist pastor, helps us answer this question by drawing our attention away from our introspection to the words of the bridegroom in Song of Solomon 1:15: “You are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful.” Interpreting Song of Solomon as an allegorical portrayal of an exchange between Christ and his bride, the church, Gill writes, “These are the words of Christ, commending the beauty of the church, expressing his great affection for her; of her fairness and beauty” (An Exposition of the Book of Solomon’s Song, 57). Jesus sees his bride through a lens of love, not disdain; beauty, not disgust.

“Jesus sees his bride through a lens of love, not disdain; beauty, not disgust.”

How can beautiful be the adjective Jesus uses to describe the church? After all, she’s composed of sinners — forgiven sinners, yet still sinners. She’s plagued by division, is besieged with scandal, and sometimes appears to have lost her first love. Even the apostle Paul reminds us that only at the end of the age will she be found “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27). What does Jesus see in his bride that would cause him to exclaim, “You are beautiful, my love”?

1. The Beauty of His Father

God’s beauty is most radiantly displayed through the biblical concept of glory. Moses experienced this glory when God passed by him, revealing only the afterglow of his splendor (Exodus 33:12–23). When God’s glory engulfed the temple, the priests were unable to perform their service of worship (2 Chronicles 5:14). The prophet Isaiah was prostrate in the dirt when he witnessed God’s glory radiating from his eternal throne (Isaiah 6:1–5). Jonathan Edwards, eighteenth-century pastor-theologian, identified God’s beauty as the differentiating feature of God himself: “God is God, and is distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above ’em, chiefly by his divine beauty, which is infinitely diverse from all other beauty” (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2:298). God’s beauty isn’t derived from external sources but emanates directly from the perfection and holiness of his being.

The supreme expression of God’s beauty is his Son, Jesus Christ, who himself is the image and radiance of his Father (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3). The incarnate Christ is how God most vividly expresses his beautiful love to sinful creatures. The culmination of that love is selecting a bride for Christ that she too might reflect the same beauty. Edwards believed that this bride, the church,

is the great end of all the great things that have been done from the beginning of the world; it was that the Son of God might obtain his chosen spouse that the world was created . . . and that he came into the world . . . and when this end shall be fully obtained, the world will come to an end. (Unpublished sermon on Revelation 22:16–17)

The church is a gift from God to his Son as a beautiful expression of divine love “so that the mutual joys between this bride and bridegroom are the end of creation” (Works, 13:374). Therefore, as the Son reflects his Father, the church, as his eternal bride, reflects the Son.

When Christ regards his bride and exclaims that she is beautiful, he beholds the reflection of his Father’s everlasting beauty and infinite love, who chose and saves this bride and gives her as a gift to his Son. Since Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God, there is now no more brilliant exemplification of God’s perfect beauty in the world than his church.

2. The Sufficiency of His Cross

Jesus doesn’t see any intrinsic beauty emitted by the church, for she has no beauty apart from him. He looks at the church through blood, his blood. As if looking through the varied luminous colors of a stained-glass window, Jesus beholds the church through the multifaceted wonder of redemption — blood, election, righteousness, forgiveness, regeneration, justification, union, and grace. Only in union with his perfect substitutionary sacrifice on the cross and glorious triumphant resurrection are filthy sinners washed white as snow (Psalm 51:7). Because of our sin, what God requires of us is paid in full by our bridegroom on the cross.

“Because of our union with Christ, God’s love of his Son now includes love of his Son’s bride.”

With all of its flowing blood, lacerated flesh, and stench of death, the cross becomes the epicenter of cleansing for sinners, where Christ looks lovingly upon his darling bride and declares, “My love, you are beautiful.” Reflecting on the sufficiency of the cross, Edwards writes, “Christ loves the elect with so great and strong a love, they are so near to him, that God looks upon them as it were as parts of him” (Works, 14:403). Because of our union with Christ, God’s love of his Son now includes love of his Son’s bride. When Christ exclaims that his bride is beautiful, he does so through the lens of the sufficiency of his cross and makes the church the sole recipient of the love that ceaselessly flows between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

3. The Fulfillment of His Mission

The New Testament is unmistakably clear that God has commissioned his church as the principal agency for heralding the gospel of Christ. This commission in Matthew 28:18–20 stands as the summit of the church’s mission for all subsequent generations. Beginning in Jerusalem, the disciples understood this assignment with vital urgency and launched the beautiful good news of Christ into all the earth (Acts 1:8). No church has the freedom to tamper with, tweak, add to, or subtract from the good news of Jesus Christ — we are called to herald it to the nations, for there is nothing more beautiful and lovely in the sight of Christ than the Holy Spirit regenerating, calling, and transferring sinners from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

All evangelistic and missionary endeavors are fueled by the assurance that Christ is enthroned as the head of his church and has promised to ransom men and women from “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:8–9).

This assurance fueled the Genevan Reformer John Calvin to write to the king when evangelistic efforts were harshly suppressed in his homeland of France:

Our doctrine must tower unvanquished above all the glory and above all the might of the world, for it is not of us, but of the living God and his Christ whom the Father has appointed to “rule from sea to sea, and from the rivers even to the ends of the earth (Psalm 72:8).” (Prefatory address to Institutes of the Christian Religion)

Calvin reminds the church that the gospel “is not of us,” but originates from God. Entrusting his church with the task of heralding the gospel, God has chosen her to be an honored vessel to house and disseminate his glorious treasure (2 Corinthians 4:7). When Christ beholds the church, he sees the voice, hands, feet, and heart of the gospel message in rescuing sinners.

The Bride Is Welcome

Jesus doesn’t lament the church he has rescued or look for another to capture his attention. Christ welcomes the church as his beautiful treasure and joy. The church isn’t just about organization, leadership, function, and vision. Jesus sees more. His gaze reveals the beauty of our Father, the sufficiency of his cross, and the fulfillment of his mission in the world. He sees sinners being rescued, redeemed, and renewed.

The bride is now waiting and watching for our bridegroom’s appearance, when he will bid us “Welcome” for all eternity to bask in the glory of his eternal presence (2 Timothy 4:8). Until then, Jesus bids us to join him in gazing upon his bride and exclaiming of her, “Behold, you are beautiful!” (Song of Solomon 1:15).

Audio Transcript

Is joy a choice, or is joy just a feeling that comes and goes? That is a great question, one our culture asks all the time. And if our joy is a choice, whose choice is it ultimately? That actually was the question I attempted to answer in my book The Joy Project. I know a number of you have read that book. I think joy is a better way to frame the essentials of Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism: God’s sovereign joy in pursuit of us.

But here’s the specific question on the table today, as it comes to us from Susan in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. My question is pretty straightforward. Can you tell me if joy in God is a choice that we make? Or is our joy in God a feeling that comes to us after we do a certain something else first that will lead to joy?”

Here’s an amazing fact to start off with. If you consider all the forms of the word choose or choice or decide or decision, the New Testament never applies those words to the act of choosing God or choosing Christ or choosing Christianity. I think that would come as a shock to a lot of people. (One near exception is Mary choosing to sit at Jesus’s feet while Martha did the housework, but Mary is already a follower.)

In fact, the one place where choosing Jesus is mentioned, it’s denied. In John 15:16, Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” In other words, when the disciples chose to follow Jesus, it wasn’t ultimately their choice. It was God’s choice. He was decisive in that event. God’s choosing us is mentioned over and over and over in the New Testament, but our choosing him is not mentioned, not with the words choose or decide.

Incline Your Heart

Now, if you go to the Old Testament, there’s that famous statement of Joshua 24:15, “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua is happy to call for a choice to serve God or not.

But then a few verses later, he says this (in Joshua 24:22–23): “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him. . . . Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.” Now, why did Joshua add the command to “incline your heart”? He said it because there is such a thing as choosing to serve God while the heart is far from God.

And Jesus said that. He said it in Matthew 15:8, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” They choose to go to church on Sunday morning. They choose to sing, and they choose to pray. They choose to go to the synagogue, or they choose to give tithes. And on the outside, they look like they’ve chosen God.

They have not chosen God. They have chosen religion to hide the fact that their heart wants something else besides God. That’s why Joshua said, “It’s not enough. This is not enough to choose to serve God. Your heart must incline to the Lord. The Lord must be your treasure — not the praise of man, not health, not wealth, not prosperity.”

Deeper Than a Choice

Now, the way all of this relates to Susan’s question is that this inclination of the heart, which both Joshua and Jesus refer to, is deeper than a choice. It’s a kind of joy in God. Joshua was saying what Psalm 100 says; namely, if you’re choosing to serve God, then let that choice be acceptable to God — let it be honoring to God by “[serving] the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2). That’s a command: “Serve the Lord with gladness!” That is, have your heart incline to God; don’t just choose to serve him. Serve him with gladness.

For a choice to be pleasing to God and honoring to God, it must be rooted in the heart’s taste for God, in gladness in God. In other words, a choice for God or a preference for God that honors God must be rooted in the heart’s experience of God as preferable. What makes a choice to serve God real is that the choice expresses the fact that the heart has found God to be preferable, desirable, valuable.

When Jesus said that the people had chosen to honor God with their lips but not with their hearts because their hearts were far from him, he meant that their hearts did not taste God as desirable. They didn’t taste God as valuable. They didn’t taste God as preferable. Their taste was for the praise of man, not God.

So, my answer for Susan is no, joy is not a choice. It is deeper. It is the gift of an experience of God as desirable, preferable, valuable. It’s not a mere choice. It is the God-given, spontaneous response to seeing God as desirable — tasting him as good, as preferable to other satisfactions.

Joy by Looking

That’s what it means in 1 Peter 2:2–3 when it says, “Long for the pure spiritual milk . . . if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Tasting is not a choice. If you put a lemon in your mouth, no amount of choosing can make it taste like sugar. It’s not a choice. It’s the way your taste buds are designed. And there are taste buds on the soul that are either ruined or alive — which brings us then to the other part of Susan’s question about how our spiritual taste buds might be changed.

She asks, “Is joy in God a feeling that comes after we do something else that leads to joy in God?” Now, the very fact that we’re talking about joy in God — not just joy generically, but joy in God, or experiencing God as our joy — implies that we need to have some knowledge of God in order to have authentic joy in God.

This means that any steps we can take to put ourselves in the way of true knowledge of God may prove to be the very action that leads to joy in God. So, in that sense, yes. Joy in God is a feeling that comes after we do something else that leads to joy in God; namely, listening to the truth about God.

If joy in God is the heart’s experience of preferring God, desiring God, treasuring God, then it’s not surprising that the main thing we can do in order to experience this is look intently at God’s greatness, God’s beauty, God’s worth in his word. Faith and the “joy [of] faith” (Philippians 1:25), Paul says (and I would say), comes by hearing, and hearing (or reading) by the word of God (Romans 10:17).

Joy by Praying

And there is another action — I’ll just mention one more — that we can do and should do in the pursuit of joy in God. We should pray. Pray the following two prayers with the psalmists. They prayed like this because they had the same experience of sometimes feeling what they ought to feel and sometimes not feeling what they ought to feel in regard to the joy we should have in God.

Open my eyes, that I may behold     wondrous things out of your law. (Psalm 119:18)

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,     that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

We should pray to have eyes to see and hearts to feel. So, in summary, Susan, joy in God is not a choice. It is a God-given, spontaneous experience of the beauty, worth, greatness of God. But there are choices that we can make that may lead to that experience, because the Bible says, “Look. Look and pray. Look at the Lord in his word, and pray for eyes to see and a heart to feel.”