Slow to chide, and swift to bless.

With such a memorable tribute to our heavenly Father, pastor and poet Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847) ends the second stanza of his hymn “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven.” Lyte was born to a derelict father, who sent him off to boarding school, nearly abandoned him, and signed infrequent letters “Uncle” instead of “Father.” In time, young Henry was taken in at holidays by the school’s headmaster as a kind of adopted son.

So Lyte knew personally the pains of a negligent father. Yet he came to find healing in a heavenly Father. “I have called Thee Abba Father,” he writes in the climactic verse of “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken.” And then again in “Praise, My Soul,”

Fatherlike he tends and spares us;well our feeble frame he knows.In his hand he gently bears us,rescues us from all our foes.

The functionally orphaned poet came to know deeply the fatherhood of God for having had such an awful earthly one — and in seeing what he saw, he teaches us a vital aspect of all healthy fatherhood.

One Thousand Versus Four

“Slow to chide, and swift to bless” is a fitting tribute to our heavenly Father who revealed himself to Moses, and across time, culminating in Christ, as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin . . .” (Exodus 34:6–7). In showing us his glory, he leads with grace and mercy.

“In showing us his glory, our heavenly Father leads with grace and mercy.”

Notice, in his swiftness to bless his people, our heavenly Father is not absent of chiding, but slow to it: “. . . who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). Our God is merciful and gracious, and no pushover. He does indeed chide. When he does, however, observe the ratio with his blessing: he chides “to the third and the fourth generation” but blesses with “steadfast love for thousands.” And even then, because we’re sinners, his chiding is not at odds with his blessing, but a vital aspect of it.

Psalm 103 echoes the great revelation to Moses and adds a connection to fatherhood:

The Lord is merciful and gracious,     slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.He will not always chide,     nor will he keep his anger forever. . . .As a father shows compassion to his children,     so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. (Psalm 103:8–10, 13)

Though he will chide, and though we feel the sting, his final word to his children is always blessing and favor and joy:

His anger is but for a moment,     and his favor is for a lifetime.Weeping may tarry for the night,     but joy comes with the morning. (Psalm 30:5)

Our Father and We Fathers

What might this remarkable peek into the heart of our heavenly Father — slow to chide, swift to bless — mean for how we raise, discipline, and delight in our own children?

Such a vision of our Father’s glory not only runs across Scripture from beginning to end but also informs human fatherhood. As earthly fathers, we take our cues from the heavenly Father (Ephesians 3:14). In Christ, we too, though typically formed and conditioned in opposite ways, want to become increasingly “slow to chide, and swift to bless.” This kind of posture fits with, and is filled out, by Paul’s remarkable one-verse vision of parenting, and fatherhood in particular, in Ephesians 6:4:

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Clearly what the apostle says here is relevant for mothers too, and yet he addresses fathers specifically — not simply as head of the household, but also as the one with the particular responsibility for educating the children in preparation for sending them out into the world.

Given Authority to Bless

The most disciplinarian dads among us will do well to observe that Paul doesn’t summarize the task as, “Make sure to establish and exercise authority over your children.” Rather, he assumes fatherly authority. Given the authority (and power) that we already have, as dads, by ordinance of God, he cautions us to exercise it with care, being mindful not to harm our children with our greater abilities, but instead to help them.

“Do not provoke your children to anger.” For our part, we are not to give our children any just reason to be angry or discouraged. We should not sin against them, but treat them with full Christian virtue — with as much kindness and respect as we treat fellow adults in our lives, whether at work, or at church, or in the neighborhood. That God has given children to us, and instructed them to obey us, is patently no excuse for sinning against them. Rather, it is all the more reason to make every effort, with God’s help, to treat our children with the utmost Christian kindness, and respect, and love.

“Our children should be the ones we treat best of all people, not worst.”

Given their vulnerability as children, and our calling as their parents, they should be the ones we treat best of all people, not worst. Our adult sins have far greater repercussions than the missteps of our children.

Gentle, Patient Teachers

So, Paul assumes fatherly authority, and then exhorts us to wield it for the benefit, not detriment, of our children. The question is not whether fathers will provoke or drive their children; we will. With our presence or absence, with our holiness or sin, we inevitably will turn and shape our children in some direction. The question is whether we will drive them to anger or provoke them to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24).

What, then, might we avoid and pray against in ourselves? Commentator Andrew Lincoln writes that the negative charge in Ephesians 6:4 involves “avoiding attitudes, words, and actions which would drive a child to angry exasperation or resentment and thus rules out excessively severe discipline, unreasonably harsh demands, abuse of authority, arbitrariness, unfairness, constant nagging and condemnation, subjecting a child to humiliation, and all forms of gross insensitivity to a child’s needs and sensibilities” (Ephesians, 406). With a few moments pondering, we all might make similar lists. And, remembering Lyte, we might also rule out neglect, which is a great temptation in times of multiplied distractions and screens.

In other words, fathers are to have their children in submission with all dignity, as Paul requires of elders in 1 Timothy 3:4. We all know there are dishonorable, undignified ways to have children in submission, as well as honorable ones. “In contrast to the norms of the day,” writes P.T. O’Brien,

Paul wants Christian fathers to be gentle, patient educators of their children, whose chief ‘weapon’ is Christian instruction focused on loyalty to Christ as Lord. Christian fathers were to be different from those of their surrounding society. (447)

Countercultural parenting in the first century may have meant, especially, swiftness to bless. Today it might also require the countercultural intentionality and deliberateness that is a readiness to genuinely chide, even as we’re slow to it, and never less than loving in it.

Speed Limits of Fatherhood

In cultivating such holy slowness to chide, we parents, and fathers especially, remember not only that we are bigger than our kids physically, but also that we should be bigger people than our children — that is, in the inner man. As adults, and fathers, we’re called to be the mature ones, the magnanimous ones, the patient ones. Our physical size and strength distinguish us from our children. So should our emotional maturity.

This might lead us to keep in mind, for example, that voice volume is not a clear differentiator between adults and children. Raising our voice is no special parental ability. However, patience should be. And wisdom. Practicing Christian patience as a parent does not mean failing to discipline our children, but it does help us to be slower to chide than we might be naturally, and to exercise wisdom, in partnership with our wife, in applying the rod.

As fathers who take our cues from the heavenly Father, we are encouraged, in the words of Henry Francis Lyte, to be swift to bless: quick to commend our children when they obey cheerfully, quick to give them our attention, quick to express praise and love and delight, quick to teach them ahead of time, knowing that the lion’s share of fatherly discipline is pro-active instruction and anticipating their needs and weaknesses. And then we must correct and reprove. Indeed we will chide. And our children will be all the better for it when we, like our heavenly Father, have been swift to bless.

Why do Christians find it so hard to love one another? I don’t ask the question as just one more critic of the church’s failures — I have trouble enough addressing the log of lovelessness protruding from my own eye. And of course, the question has as many different answers as there are Christians — many times more, actually, since we each have multiple reasons for why we find it hard to love God and others the ways we should.

We’re not surprised that humanity as a whole finds the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13 so difficult. Humans are fallen; it’s impossibly hard for sinful people who are separated from Christ to “bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things” as love does.

But what can surprise us is that Christians have such a hard time with love. How is it that we who have been born again, have received a new heart, and have the Holy Spirit empowering us still find loving God with our whole being, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and loving our fellow Christians as Jesus loved us so difficult? Shouldn’t it be easier than we experience it to be?

“The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to love like Jesus loved, which is impossible without him.”

Both the New Testament and two thousand years of church history say no. One reason for this is that the Holy Spirit isn’t given to us to magically turn us into people who love like Jesus. He is given to us as a Helper (John 14:26) to teach us how to follow our Great Shepherd along the hard, laborious path of transformation into people who love like Jesus. The Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to love like Jesus loved, which is impossible without him. But he provides us no easy shortcuts to God-like love.

Easy Yoke, Hard Way

What’s all this talk about a “hard, laborious path of transformation”? Didn’t Jesus say, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30)? Yes, he did. But he also said, “The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14). These two statements aren’t contradictions; they are two different dimensions of what it means to repent and believe in the gospel.

When it comes to the dimension of reconciling us to God, Jesus does all the impossibly heavy work required to “[cancel] the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands” (Colossians 2:14). In this sense, Jesus’s yoke is easy: he pays the debt in full for us. The only light burden required of us is to repent and believe in the gospel.

But when it comes to the dimension of God’s conforming us to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29), of “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18), the way is hard that leads to life. In this context, for us to repent and believe in the gospel means learning to walk in “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5) — learning to “walk by the Spirit, and . . . not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16), learning to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him” (Colossians 1:10).

Our learning to walk in the way of Christ is no less a work of God’s grace in us than our learning to believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. But it requires us to exercise our faith in Christ through actively obeying Christ contrary to the sinful desires that still dwell in our members (Romans 7:23).

It’s Supposed to Be Hard

According to the New Testament, learning to walk in the obedience of faith looks like the following:

Denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following where Jesus leads (Matthew 16:24)
Putting to death what is earthly in us (Colossians 3:5), and not letting sin reign in our mortal bodies, to make us obey its passions (Romans 6:12)
Dying every day to sin, personal preferences, and even our Christian freedoms out of love for Jesus, our brothers and sisters in the faith, and unbelievers (1 Corinthians 15:31)
Doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility counting others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3)
Putting on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven us (Colossians 3:12–13)
Repaying no one evil for evil, but always seeking to do good to one another and to everyone (1 Thessalonians 5:15)
Rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18)
Loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44)
Wrestling against spiritual rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness — the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12)

“The transformational way of love that leads to life is hard. It’s supposed to be hard.”

And these are just a sampling. But it’s a hefty enough sample to give us a sense of how humanly impossible it is for us to obey the greatest commandments — for these are all expressions of love for God, our neighbors, and other Christians. Everyone who takes these imperatives seriously realizes that the transformational way of love that leads to life is hard. It’s supposed to be hard.

But why does the way need to be as hard as it is? Here’s one way Jesus answered that question.

Only Possible with God

Do you remember the story of the rich young man in Matthew 19? When forced to choose, he couldn’t let go of his wealth in order to have God, which revealed that he loved his wealth more than God, that his wealth was his god. As Jesus watched the man walk away, he said, “I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And do you remember the disciples’ response? They asked, “Who then can be saved?” When they saw where Jesus placed the bar, it hit them: no one can possibly jump that high. Which was precisely Jesus’s point: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

All we disciples must come to this realization. However morally beautiful and admirable we find Jesus’s love commands in the abstract, we cannot and will not obey them in our own strength. It’s impossible. Our flesh is simply too weak and our remaining sin too strong.

That bears repeating. It’s impossible to love like Jesus without being empowered by the Holy Spirit. Because striving to love God and others like Jesus exposes and confronts every unholy, sinful, selfish impulse of remaining sin in us, requiring us to daily put to death what is earthly in us and regularly deny ourselves for Jesus’s sake and the good of others.

None of us will consistently, continually walk in this hard way unless, by the Spirit, we truly “[behold] the glory of the Lord,” and see all the hardship as “light momentary affliction” that is transforming us from one degree of glory to another and “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:17). We will not walk this hard way unless we see that living according to the flesh leads to death, but putting to death the deeds of the body by the power of the Spirit leads to life (Romans 8:13) — that choosing the hard way is choosing the abundant life (John 10:10).

‘You Follow Me’

This doesn’t answer a host of questions that puzzle us along the path of love. Many of them, when viewed from our very limited perspective, may not seem to make sense. I know. I’ve pondered questions like these for a long time.

But when I get overly discouraged and critical of the church’s failures to love, something Jesus once said to Peter often helps me refocus on my own log of lovelessness — the failures to love that I’m primarily responsible for and can, by the power of the Spirit, do something about. When Jesus revealed to Peter the unpleasant way he was going to die, Peter essentially asked, “Well, does John have to die an unpleasant death too?” Jesus essentially answered him, “How I choose to deal with John is not your concern. You follow me!” (John 21:21–22).

God has woven so many mysterious purposes into the way he’s ordered reality, and I continue to learn just how unreliable my perceptions are when it comes to deciphering them. I am wise to heed Paul’s words: “[Do not] pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart” (1 Corinthians 4:5); I am wise to heed Jesus’s words, “You follow me!”

As Christians, our primary calling today is to follow Jesus, in the power of the Spirit of Jesus, on the hard way of self-sacrificial, God-glorifying love that leads to an incomparably glorious, abundant, and eternal life. We are not responsible for the loving witness of the whole church, or even of our whole local church.

But if we are willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus — as imperfectly as we all love this side of glory — then we will increasingly experience the result of the Spirit-born fruit of love: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Audio Transcript

Back in October of last year, we looked at the shipwrecked faith. Specifically, how do people make shipwreck of their faith? What causes it? And there in APJ 1849, Pastor John, you defined the shipwrecked faith as a person who makes a beginning in the Christian life, but who drifts away as their heart increasingly prefers sin over Christ. It’s a heart-preference issue. The heart falls in love with riches, or the heart falls in love with this present world and its approval, and so it rejects a good conscience and becomes defiled by the world’s sin. Basically, a shipwrecked faith is the heart’s desires corrupted.

But sometimes when we speak of the shipwrecked faith, we assume this state is one of final undoing — like, there’s no hope for return. It’s over. You shipwrecked, or you don’t shipwreck. Which leads to today’s email from a listener named Jacob. “Pastor John, thank you for all your service and for your passion in the gospel! My question is this: Is there hope for those who have shipwrecked their faith? I believe I have done this as 1 Timothy 1:19 describes what has happened to those who have rejected a good conscience. I feel my communion with the Lord has been dry and blocked for almost six months now due to my personal sin. Can a shipwrecked faith be undone?”

I think it would be unbiblical and unwarranted and unhelpful for me to say to Jacob that he is beyond hope. Those six months of sin and disobedience and distance from God are no sure sign that Jacob is beyond hope. So let me try to give four encouraging reasons from the Bible for why I say this for Jacob’s sake — and also for others who no doubt share his condition — and then we’ll close with a sober warning and a hopeful exhortation.

Handed Over for Discipline

First, let’s just pay attention to the context that he’s referring to in 1 Timothy 1:19–20. It’s a very hopeful context, not a despairing one, when he talks about the shipwreck. He says, “[Hold] faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this [the good conscience], some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.”

So Paul knows these two men. He knows them, and he says that they’ve made shipwreck of their faith by rejecting conscience, and that he has handed them over to Satan. But why? Why did he hand them over? It does not say he handed them over for final punishment. It says he handed them over to Satan to “learn.” The word is paideuō, which means “to give instruction, to train, to discipline.” So he handed them over to be instructed, to be trained, to be disciplined. This is not a word for final judgment or damnation. This is a word for remediation, improvement, and hope.

“Making shipwreck of your faith need not mean final loss. There is hope for a turnaround.”

And supporting that interpretation that I just gave is the fact that there’s one other place in the writings of Paul where he speaks about people being handed over to Satan because they’ve sinned in an egregious way. In 1 Corinthians 5:5, he says, “You are to deliver this man [who’s committed this terrible sexual sin] to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” Again, the aim of handing him over to Satan is salvation, not damnation, which means that making shipwreck of your faith in 1 Timothy need not be final loss. There is hope for a turnaround. That’s my hopeful argument number one.

Surviving a Shipwreck

Number two, why did Paul use the image of shipwreck? He could have used so many other images for the destruction of faith or the damage of faith. Why did he use that? They rejected conscience; they’ve chosen to live against their conscience, in sin. They’ve therefore left the faith — at least it looks like they’ve left it — and they’ve turned away. What did shipwreck mean in Paul’s experience?

Well, he tells us. It’s quite amazing. I didn’t quite realize this until thinking about it for this question. Here’s 2 Corinthians 11:25: “Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked.” Are you kidding me? “Three times I was shipwrecked.” Now that’s before the one in the book of Acts (see Acts 27). So we can say he was shipwrecked at least four times. “Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea.” Paul must have thought, “Lord, I’ve got to be persecuted in every city, and every third time I get on a boat, you’re going to make it go down?”

That’s a lot of shipwrecks for a life as short as Paul’s. Paul had experienced three shipwrecks even before the one in the book of Acts, and one of them evidently left him drifting in the water, holding onto some wreckage for a day and a night before he was, what — picked up by some other boat or got to shore? I don’t know. Amazing, three shipwrecks! As if it were not enough that he was persecuted everywhere and had every other manner of trouble.

But here’s the relevant thing for Jacob’s question. Shipwreck in Paul’s experience did not mean death. It didn’t mean judgment and death; it meant loss and suffering. It was not final, at least not in Paul’s experience. It wasn’t final. Three times he had come through it alive. He knew people survived shipwrecks. He had three times. So there’s no warrant to think that when it says “shipwreck of faith” in 1 Timothy, he meant, “That’s the end of faith. It’ll never come back. It can’t survive. It’s not holding on for a day and a night in the water. No hope for Hymenaeus and Alexander. No hope for Jacob.” No way. That’s not what it implies necessarily. You can’t argue that from the word shipwreck.

From Useless to Useful

Third, one of the most beautiful sentences in Paul’s letters is 2 Timothy 4:11, where he says to Timothy, “Luke alone is with me [this is Paul’s last letter; he’s soon to be killed]. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me in ministry.” That’s beautiful. Now, I know that when John Mark left Paul and Barnabas and refused to go on the missionary-journey work, we are not told why. We were not told that it was a crisis of faith, a little mini-shipwreck or something like that. We’re not told. We don’t know why he turned back.

What we do know is that Paul was really angry. He was so displeased by Mark’s behavior, he refused — absolutely refused, at the expense of his own friendship with his close friend Barnabas — to take John Mark with him on his second missionary journey. Luke says it caused “a sharp disagreement” between Barnabas and Paul. (Acts 15:39) And Mark must have felt a deep sting from the great apostle. Picture it: your favorite Christian leader says, “I’m not going to work with you. You’re a quitter.” Oh my goodness. What a shaming thing to happen to John Mark.

Now, that may be what Jacob feels right now in asking us this question. Maybe he feels like, “I’ve just so badly deserted, like John Mark did, that I could never be useful again.” But the encouraging thing is that here, at the end of Paul’s life, either he or Mark (probably Mark) has changed. Something’s changed. Mark has become not just useful, but very useful. “Get Mark and bring him, Timothy, because he’s very useful to me for ministry.” And I mentioned this simply to show that there have been, and there can be now, dramatic changes in people’s lives so that being rejected and useless can turn around and become accepted and useful. So that’s number three.

Denier No Longer

Here’s number four. Picture the night that Peter denied the Lord Jesus three times. Jesus had warned him that this was coming. And Peter, instead of humbling himself with trembling and pleading for help — “Oh, don’t let that happen to me, Jesus. Please, don’t let that happen to me!” — was instead cocksure it would never happen. “I’m not going to deny you — I’m ready to die with you” (see Luke 22:33). And here’s Luke’s description of that final moment after the third denial of Peter. This is just so moving.

Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:60–62)

Surely this was a shipwreck if ever there were one. Three times he denies the Lord of glory after three years of experiencing his glory and beauty and love and patience — three times in the hour of his greatest suffering and loneliness. And Peter knew the Lord saw it. He saw it happen. There was just no question. “Jesus knows what I’ve just done. He saw me, and he knows what I’ve done.” And therefore, his guilt must have been horrible. The shame he must have felt as he wept must have been absolutely overwhelming.

“Peter’s ship of faith wrecked. It really did. But it didn’t wreck utterly, not finally. And Jesus welcomed him back.”

And then, as we know from the Gospel of John, the Lord met him after the resurrection and three times — no accident — asked him, “Do you love me?” And after he heard yes after each of those three times, he said, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17). You’re back Peter — you’re back. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. The ship of faith wrecked. It really did. But it didn’t wreck utterly, not finally. And Jesus welcomed him back.

He Welcomes All Who Come

My fifth statement, which I said would be a sober warning and an exhortation of hope, comes from Hebrews 12. It’s about Esau. It says, “See to it . . . that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected . . .” Let me say that again, because that’s sober. “You know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it [namely, repentance] with tears” (Hebrews 12:15–17). Now here’s the sober warning: it is possible to make shipwreck of your faith like Esau and never be saved. That’s a sober warning.

But here’s the hopeful truth and my exhortation: the text does not say, “Even though he repented, God withheld the blessing.” That’s not what it says. It says he sought repentance with tears, and he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t do it. This is the final shipwreck from which there is no salvation: we sin so long or so deeply that we can’t repent. We can’t. Our hearts have become too hard.

But the hope is obvious, right? It’s obvious: if you repent — if by God’s grace you can turn and renounce your sin and come to Christ and take him afresh as your Savior and Lord and treasure — he will receive you. “All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). So the exhortation, Jacob — and every other person listening in Jacob’s situation — is to come to Christ. Come back. If you can come, he will have you.