We felt safe with Seth.

I was 16 years old, in tenth grade — right in the middle of those promising and perilous teenage years — when he came to our church as the new youth minister. I was surrounded by the pressures and confusion of adolescence, and yet Seth Buckley brought a clarifying, stabilizing presence. He embodied mature Christian manhood, with both strength and gentleness.

None could question his physical strength. He had played linebacker at Alabama, and he could squat and bench far more than any of us high-school athletes. Yet he played the guitar and sang solos. And his tender heart for Jesus, and teenagers, came through, often with tears, in heartfelt rehearsals of the gospel every Wednesday night.

The reason we felt safe with Seth wasn’t because he was weak. He emphatically was not. He was strong — both physically and emotionally. And he was gentle. That is, he knew how to use his strength to life-giving ends. To the gift of his strength, he had added the virtue of gentleness.

Neither effeminate nor brutish, neither soft nor violent, Seth modeled for us teenaged men-in-training the kind of men we wanted to be deep down — the kind of men the gospel produces over time. In this way, knowing Seth helps me imagine what it may have been like to know King David.

Expert in War

We might remember David as “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1) and forget he was first a fearless, strong, and skilled man of war. But a striking scene at the end of his life gives a fuller picture of David than the simple singer-songwriter. When David’s son Absalom rebels against his father, marches on Jerusalem, and sends David momentarily retreating, David’s friend Hushai plays loyal to Absalom in order to defeat the rebel counsel. As he makes his case (which carries the day), he characterizes David, in terms that all agreed with:

You know that your father and his men are mighty men, and that they are enraged, like a bear robbed of her cubs in the field. Besides, your father is expert in war. (2 Samuel 17:8)

Not just his men, but David himself is mighty — and expert in war. And this wasn’t new. When we first meet David (even before Goliath), he is introduced as “a man of valor, a man of war”:

Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him. (1 Samuel 16:18)

In the following chapter, the Goliath account, we learn that David has already killed lions and bears (1 Samuel 17:34–36). He has the courage to face the giant, and the skill to conquer him. And though still a youth, David is strong enough to take Goliath’s massive sword, draw it from its sheath, and take off the giant’s head (1 Samuel 17:51). Soon the imposing Saul, who stood head and shoulders above the rest, would hear his people singing of David’s strength: “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7).

What Made Him Great?

Psalm 18, which David wrote in praise of God’s lifelong deliverance, celebrates the physical strength and ability that God had given and honed in his anointed. David “can run against a troop” and “leap over a wall” (Psalm 18:29); he says that God “equipped me with strength” (Psalm 18:39) and “made my feet like the feet of a deer” (Psalm 18:33). God “trains my hands for war,” making his arms strong enough to “bend a bow of bronze” (Psalm 18:34). And yet, right here, in mention after mention of his human strength, David celebrates the surpassing quality of gentleness. Strength and skill may have made him a good warrior and king, but “Your gentleness,” he says to God, “made me great” (Psalm 18:35).

“Both strong and gentle, David knows when to wield his strength and when to walk in gentleness.”

Strength, valor, and experience made David “expert in war,” but it was God’s own gentleness (which David learned firsthand) that made David great. Not only had the omnipotent God been gentle with his Anointed, in his finitude and many failings, but God’s gentleness had come to characterize David’s own leadership. As Derek Kidner comments, “While it was the gentleness God exercised that allowed David his success, it was the gentleness God taught him that was his true greatness” (Psalms, 95).

Where do we see this greatness? When did David add the surpassing virtue of gentleness to the valuable ability of his strength? Psalm 18 appears in 2 Samuel 22 at the culmination of the book, and two key mentions of David’s gentleness earlier in the story set up this climactic line and lesson.

Gentle with an Enemy

After the death of Saul, David’s commander, Joab, avenges the personal loss of his own brother. Saul’s commander, Abner, had struck down Joab’s brother, Asahel, after he had pursued Abner after battle. Abner had warned him to turn aside, and Asahel would not, and Abner struck him in the stomach. “A long war between the house of Saul and the house of David” followed, with David growing “stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul became weaker and weaker” (2 Samuel 3:1).

In time, Abner sought peace with David and delivered the rest of the kingdom to David. They feasted together, and David sent Abner away in peace. But Joab then drew Abner aside (under the pretense of peace) “to speak with him privately, and there he struck him in the stomach, so that he died, for the blood of Asahel his brother” (2 Samuel 3:27). The contrast between David and Joab is stark and pronounced. Both can be fearsome in battle. Both are strong, brave, and experts of war. But Joab, while an asset in war, is a liability in peace.

Joab’s unrighteous killing of Abner threatens the consolidation of the nation under David’s rule. So, David publicly mourns the death of Abner so that “all the people and all Israel understood that day that it had not been the king’s will to put to death Abner” (2 Samuel 3:37). David speaks to his servants to make clear his differences from Joab, the son of Zeruiah:

Do you not know that a prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel? And I was gentle today, though anointed king. These men, the sons of Zeruiah, are more severe than I. The Lord repay the evildoer according to his wickedness! (2 Samuel 3:38–39)

Gentle with a Traitor

Second, near the end of David’s reign, when Absalom has rebelled against him, David sends Joab and the army out against Absalom, but with specific instructions. In keeping with his pattern of exercising strength, and adding to it the virtue of gentleness, David orders Joab, in the presence of many witnesses, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom” (2 Samuel 18:5).

Some commentators see weakness and indiscretion in David at this point; others see the gentleness that made him great. Peter Leithart comments,

These instructions were consistent with David’s treatment of all his enemies; he had treated Saul well, and just recently he had restrained Abishai from cutting down Shimei. He knew what Joab was capable of, and he wanted all his men to know that he treated enemies with kindness and compassion. David’s behavior again provided an Old Testament illustration of Jesus’s teaching about loving enemies. (A Son to Me, 278)

Joab, of course, defies David’s will and kills Absalom, again accenting the difference between the two men. Both are strong, but only one is great — and that through his gentleness.

Joab is the one-dimensional man of war — strong, tenacious, courageous in battle, a hero in combat. Yet his manhood is immature and incomplete. A liability at home and in peacetime, Joab is unable to cushion his strength and control his tenacity.

David, on the other hand, in masculine maturity, has learned gentleness and can thrive in all contexts. His abilities are multidimensional. He can lead a nation, not only an army. Both strong and gentle, he knows when to wield his strength and when, with admirable restraint, to walk in gentleness.

High and Exalted, Gentle and Lowly

In showing teenaged boys the strength and gentleness of mature masculinity, Seth showed us far more than the greatness of King David. While Psalm 18 gives tribute to God’s work in and through David, there is much in the psalm, writes John Calvin, that “agrees better with Christ” than with David.

“Gentleness is not the absence of strength but the addition of virtue.”

When the apostle John, on the isle of Patmos, caught his glimpses of the glory of Christ, he witnessed the paragon of mature masculinity, complete in power and grace. In Jesus, he saw not only man but “the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8). “His voice was like the roar of many waters,” and his face “like the sun shining in full strength” (Revelation 1:15–16). Later John would see this Lion of a man, sitting on a white horse, as the one who “judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11).

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. (Revelation 19:15)

Yet when the apostle looked between the angels and the throne of heaven, he “saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). A lamb-like Lion, and lion-like Lamb, awe-inspiring in his majestic strength, and yet seen to be truly great as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of his people.

Jesus’s gentleness cushions the application of his great power as he marshals it in the service of his weak people. Do not mistake his gentleness for weakness. Gentle is not code for weak. Gentleness is not the absence of strength but the addition of virtue to strength — in men like Seth, King David, and most admirably of all, the Son of God himself.

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

If an old-time preacher, one who believed in uncomfortable realities like the wrath of God, human depravity, and divine judgment, rode his horse through some of the streets of American Christianity, what might he experience?

Sounding the alarm as Paul Revere, this watchman might gallop down our paved roads yelling,

“Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming! Make way for the King! Repent and believe! Stay awake! Keep the faith! Only those who endure to the end will be saved! Put the flesh to death by the Spirit! Obey him! Finish the race! Look to Jesus! Trust him for his grace! He is coming to judge the world in righteousness!”

To his delight, a good number would trim (or would have already trimmed) their lamps. These already live looking out the window — trusting, praying, fellowshipping, killing sin, living awake — ready for their Master to return.

But to his amazement, some voices would shoot back from dimmed rooms:

“You must be lost, dear sir. We are Christians. You must have meant to stir up the next town of Never-Heard or perhaps Secular City down the way.”

“Good works,” laughs another. “Why, good sir, do not tell me you are Roman. ‘By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight’ (Romans 3:20). Our faith justifies, we will not quiver as though our doings made us right with God.”

“Forgive me,” the preacher says, taken aback. “I did not mean to have you rise and live and work to earn salvation — it cannot be done and cursed are all who try. I meant rise with your new nature, new affections, new allegiances, new Spirit, and new commandments, live and stay alert with holy urgency. Walk the narrow way, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Strive for the holiness without which we cannot see the Lord. Confirm your calling and election.”

“Yes. Yes. We have heard of your kind before,” remarks the first. “More emphasis on our works than Christ’s. Listen here, Christ lived a perfect life for me and died in my place. I have failed, will fail — and often fail — but Christ, sir, Christ lived such a life in my place. I refuse to return to law. I am gospel-centered, you see.”

“Oh, sir,” adds the second, “now I know you to be trouble. What is this talk of wrath and judgment? We are Christians. All these warnings, threats, exhortations, admonishments come to my ears as the fearmongerings of a legal religion. No condemnation is mine in Christ. I wish you a speedy return to Heretics Highway.”

With that, before another word could be spoken, several windows might shut, otherwise their snores would soon become audible from the street.

Are the Warnings for Me?

The above account, albeit exaggerated, captures the instinct of some professing Christians today when they come across the imperatives and the warnings of Scripture.

Some self-professed “gospel-centered” Christian teaching leaves little room for discussing our efforts and actions besides repeating that they do not justify; sees Christian living as an almost irrelevant holding cell before heaven; understands justification as the totality of salvation; has little-to-no category for conditional divine promises; and holds dismissive ideas about the warnings and commandments of Scripture.

“Once saved always saved,” they say in defense. “Jesus obeyed so I do not have to.” When they stumble across an imperative or warning, they dismiss it as yet another gospel-reminder — “Of course I could never cut off my hand of lust, or live a self-disciplined, pure, humble, hospitable, forgiving, or faithful life — but thank God Jesus did all that for me.” However, true cross-centeredness takes up all the aims of the cross: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

“The red ink falling from the cross did not redact the imperatives or cautions of the New Testament for believers.”

Now, thank God that Jesus has lived the life we could not live, and died the death we should have died, and rose again from the grave in victory — the heart of our faith. But the red ink falling from the cross did not redact the imperatives or cautions of the New Testament for believers. The cross does not silence its Lord.

God, from the beginning, has graciously warned his people of the hidden and inevitable consequences of their rebellion. Beginning in the garden, he spoke to the sinless man, “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). When he commands and warns us in the New Testament, do we listen?

Passing over Verses

Let’s take, for example, the cohabitating realities of justification by faith alone and a living warning of hell bound up together in Romans 8.

First, the treasured language of justification of Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” For the true believer, joined to Christ by faith: zero condemnation right now because of what Jesus has accomplished. We stand “not guilty” in the courtroom — and more than that, declared righteous through faith (Romans 3:28). Because of a work done outside of us yet applied to us, all our sins are forgiven, our guilt taken, no condemnation.

Some, then, take this promise, this glory, and infer that they are safe, already in heaven, with essentially nothing required of them until Jesus returns. Nothing but sunny skies ahead. But such forecast changes just a few verses later: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

Huh?

“If we live according to the flesh, we will die, no matter what we profess about justification.”

After telling them (and us) no condemnation exists in Christ, the apostle Paul tells them — the same group he addressed in Romans 8:1 — that if we live according to the flesh, we will die, no matter what we profess about justification. Does our gospel-centeredness mute this warning? Do we skip over these verses? We shouldn’t.

To Professing Christians

Again, Paul warns, “Professing Christian, if you do not put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit, you will surely die” — meaning, the eternal death of conscious punishment in hell. The true belief that no condemnation remains for them right now in Christ did not negate the true warning right now against living in sin.

Now note, for those wondering about assurance, Paul also will soon remind us that all the truly justified (the same ones who persevere in killing their sin by the Spirit) — will be glorified. “Those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). And by the end of the chapter, he exclaims that nothing in all the universe can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:37–39).

So which is it? Do I believe I am free from condemnation, or do I fear the possibility of condemnation? Both.

Contemplating Life Apart from Christ

We believe in the assurance Christ offers, and we fear turning from him, being lured away by the flesh, the devil, and the world. God issues real warnings about hell to keep us from that very hell. They serve as real (not hypothetical) means God uses for our perseverance.

God promises and God warns — carrot and stick — to bring us home to himself safely. His “precious and very great promises” sing us to unseen realms where his glory dwells, while his thunder shakes us from earthly temptations toward suicidal pleasures. All of his sheep will make it home treasuring both his promises (Romans 8:1) and his warnings (Romans 8:13).

And God promised this long ago:

They shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. (Jeremiah 32:38–40)

The fear of God is a new-covenant adhesive to keep us near God. Israel did not have this fear; a fear that fastens when temptation comes. Such dread is unlike fearing an abusive father, a violent fear sending us cowering away. The Christian’s fear draws him ever to Christ in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:22). Christ will find us at peace at his return (2 Peter 3:14). In Christ, we know that God won’t renege his covenant, nor do we look over our shoulder waiting for unexpected blows.

The fear soberly considers life outside of Christ, weighs the real consequences of jumping from the ark into God’s waves of judgment — and trembles.

Delight to Fear

Such faith believes that if we deny Christ, Christ will deny us (2 Timothy 2:12); if we forsake God’s kindness, we will be cut off (Romans 11:20–22); if we sow to corruption, we will reap corruption (Galatians 6:7–8); if we pamper our right eye of lust, we will be thrown into hell (Matthew 5:29); if we do not hold our original confidence to the end, we will be lost (Hebrews 3:12–14); if we continue sinning deliberately, no sacrifice for our sins remains (Hebrews 10:26–27); if we live according to the flesh, we will die (Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:19–21).

This faith takes hold of the promises that woo us to Christ, and gladly receives the warnings that shout to our souls, Do not leave him!

The new-covenant warnings are not washed away by the blood of Christ. The new-covenant people of God are those that fear him forever, with the fear of faith, for their good. Like Nehemiah, they “delight” to fear God’s name (Nehemiah 1:11) and believe, with gratitude, the cautions he gives about falling from him. They mind his warnings and rest in his promises. They love his word, serve his people, and cherish his likeness. They sing, “No condemnation in Christ,” and cry, “Flee from the wrath to come.”