http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15143190/my-flesh-was-crucified-so-why-do-i-still-sin
Audio Transcript
If my sinful flesh was removed, put off, in Christ, then why do I still sin? That’s a question we get often, rightly so. It’s a question that should be on our minds as we process the glorious truths of Colossians 2:11–12. Today the question comes from two listeners.
Max in Tulsa, Oklahoma writes in. “Hello Pastor John! My question is this: Does the born-again Christian still have a sin nature? I read Romans 7 and Galatians 5 and it seems to say yes, we do. But when I read Paul in Colossians 2:11–12, he says our ‘body of the flesh’ has been put off, cut off, and done away with completely. Or so it reads to me. Biblically speaking, do genuine Christians have a sin nature or not? Thank you!”
The same text raised the question for a listener named Carlos, who lives in the nation of Colombia. “Pastor John, according to Colossians 2:11, a Christian’s sin nature has been cut away. So why am I still tempted to sin? Why do I still battle with temptation if such a decisive work has been done in me, in Christ?”
“We can’t pursue the kind of life God calls us to live if we don’t know what happened to us when became a Christian.”
This question is so important because we can’t pursue the kind of life God calls us to live if we don’t know what happened to us when became a Christian. There’s a great deal of emphasis today, it seems to me, on what has happened for us in the cross, namely that our sins are forgiven, and that we are accepted, and that we are loved, and that we have eternal life. But there doesn’t seem to me to be as much emphasis on what has happened to us in becoming Christians, what happened to us because of the cross.
And it’s precisely this — what happened to us, what changed in us — that Paul emphasizes as the key to how we are to pursue holiness and love and righteousness and all the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So, it’s a very important question.
Buried and Raised with Christ
Sometimes we can get all tangled up in our terminology, and so, in answering the question, I’m going to stay very close to the apostle Paul’s terminology.
Max asked the question in terms of sin nature. Now that’s not exactly Paul’s language but I think if we stay with Paul’s language, we will answer Max’s question. Paul teaches that when we become Christians through faith in Christ, we are united to Christ so that his death counts as our death. And that’s true in two senses, not just one. First, it’s true in that the punishment we deserve for our sin was taken by Christ so that his death on the cross was our condemnation and so there’s now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
But the other sense in which his death counts as our death is that we really did die with him. In a profound sense, we really did come alive with him in his resurrection. And so the question that we’re asking is, in what sense did we die? What’s dead, and in what sense do we have newness of life?
When You Became a Christian
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11–12)
So let’s start with the text that Max refers to in the Colossians 2:11–12: “In him” — so there’s the union piece, in union with Jesus Christ — “In him, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh . . . ” — now that’s the phrase he picked up on: “put off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ” — “having been buried with him in baptism in which you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.”
So Paul is describing what happens to a person when he becomes a Christian, and he symbolizes that miracle in baptism, been buried under the water and raised up out of the water to walk in newness of life like a resurrection. So first, there’s a union with Christ. He says, “In him, you were buried and raised.” Second, this union is experienced through faith. “You were raised with him through faith, in the powerful working of God.” Baptism is an expression of faith. Third, in union with Christ, we died, and in union with Christ, we were raised. Some aspect of our being died. Something new came into being by this resurrection with Christ. Fourth, Paul compares this death in baptism through faith to a circumcision made without hands. So the analogy is that just as the foreskin of the male sexual organ is cut off and thrown away, so the body of flesh is cut off and thrown away. And we’ll come back to that in just a second (what is the body of flesh?).
This raises more questions: Who died, and who came to life, when we became Christians? And Paul describes who died in at least four ways. First, he says, “I died.” Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lived.” So I died. Number two, he says our old self died. Roman 6:6: “We know that our old self was crucified with him.” Third, he says that our flesh died. Galatians 2:24: “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh.” Fourth, he says the body of flesh. Now that’s a reference back to what we just saw in Colossians 2:11, the body of flesh. He says that in being buried with Christ, we have put off the body of flesh.
Now putting those four ways of saying it together, here’s what I conclude. In so far as I am identified with my flesh and in so far as my body is the instrument of my flesh, I died and my body died because my flesh died. Now, what does that mean?
What Is My Flesh?
What is my flesh? And here’s Paul’s answer to that question in Romans 8:7: “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh” — that is in the control and sway of this thing called flesh — “cannot please God.” So the flesh is not synonymous with the body. The flesh is my old self in its hostility to God. It’s insubordination to God. It’s inability to submit to God and please God — that’s my flesh. That’s what died when I became a Christian. God killed my hostility to God. God killed my insubordination to God.
God killed my inability to submit to God and my inability to please God. He killed me in that sense. And in the place of that old self of hostility and insubordination and inability, God created a new self. He calls it a new creation in 2 Corinthians 5 and in Ephesians 2:10. And what are the traits of this new creation, this new self that came into being when I was united to Christ and died and rose with him? Galatians 2:19–20 give a beautiful answer that says I died to the law so that I might live to God:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and here comes the key phrase I think, the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
So three ways Paul describes his new self as a Christian. First, he’s alive to God. God is real to him, precious, beautiful, desirable. He isn’t hostile to God anymore, he admires God, he loves God, he trusts God, he’s alive to God. Second, his new self lives by faith in the Son of God. So he’s no longer insubordinate and self-sufficient and self-exalting, he trusts the son of God like a little child. He submits and depends upon the mercy of God in Christ. He’s a believer, that’s what came alive. A believer came alive. And third, another way to say it is that Christ himself lives in us. I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.
The new self of the Christian is the God-loving, son-of-God-trusting, Christ-inhabited self. That’s the new creation that came into being when I rose with Christ.
Be What You Are
Now, Max is asking how this reality, not possibility, reality, these things really happen to us, we don’t make them happen, they really happen to us, how that relates, he says to my battle with sin. And the answer is that this way of understanding ourselves is the way we do battle with sin. Paul didn’t say, “Oh, since this glorious death and resurrection has happened to you, there’s no more battle of a sin.”
“Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the other words, be what you are.”
He said this new reality of life from the dead and this old reality which has died with Christ is precisely the way we fight sin in our lives. For example, Colossians 2:20, he says, “If with Christ, you died to the legalistic elemental principles of dos and don’ts — do not taste, do not touch, do not handle. . . .” And he’s explaining the false religion there. If you died to those, why are you submitting to such regulations? You’re dead to those. Don’t submit to them, be who you are.
Then later in chapter 3, he said, “You have died. So put to death what is earthly in you, immorality, impurity, passion.” So Paul did not say because you have died, there’s no battle. He said, “Because you have died, reckon yourselves dead,” Romans 6:11. Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the other words, be what you are.
Cleanse Out the Old Leaven
It may sound paradoxical, but it is a profound and glorious truth. God has made us what we are. In Christ, we are new creatures. We don’t make ourselves new creatures; we are new creatures. We act the miracle that he performed. He performed the miracle, we act it out.
Listen to first Corinthians 5:7: “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump of dough as you really are unleavened.” That just captures everything right in one verse. You are unleavened, so get the leaven out. I just love it.
So, I say to Max and to all of us, don’t let your death with Christ in your new life in Christ cause you to shrink back from making war on your sin as though that conflict should not be happening. Rather, let your death with Christ and your newness in Christ be the happy, confident ground where you take your stand and put to death the sin that remains.
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Shades of Grace: Catholics and Protestants in Conversation
Roman Catholic, Cheap Grace, and Reformed Christian sit in a small country pub, discussing justification. To the surprise of each, “It is of grace” they assert, one by one.
Seeing the suspicions written across the faces of the other two, the Catholic begins, “My catechism reads, ‘Justification comes from the grace of God.’ And by grace we mean generally, ‘favor, the free and underserved help that God gives to us to respond to his call to become children of God, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life’ (Roman Catholic, 418). We all affirm we are ‘justified by his grace as a gift’” (Romans 3:24).
To undermine any misgivings, he quickly adds, “It also states as bright as the sun, ‘[N]o one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion’ (Roman Catholic, 420). Or, to put it more strongly, ‘If any one shall say, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the strength of human nature, or through the teaching of the law, without the divine grace through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema’” (Counsel of Trent, Canon I).
Confused, Cheap Grace turns to Reformed Christian, “Wasn’t one of the pillars of the Reformation Sola gratia — justification by grace alone? But this fellow says he too believes in justification as undeserved favor, free and initiated by God. What exactly did our forefathers mean if Catholics also acknowledge God’s grace justifies?”
How might you answer this question?
By Grace Alone
Talking together at this quaint countryside, the differences at the surface between Cheap Grace, Roman Catholic, and Reformed Christian might seem surprisingly thin. Each uses the same words. Each mentions something about the grace of justification being underserved, the result of divine — not human — initiative. Each will speak of Jesus and his cross at some point and stand aligned in condemning human works apart from grace.
In other words, each will say that God redeems and restores into right relationship with himself by the work of his decisive grace. Each will say, in their own ways, salvation is of the Lord, and join to sing “Amazing Grace.” So what is the difference?
To show the relevance of Sola Gratia, a doctrine rediscovered in the Reformation, consider the contrast between Reformed Christian’s understanding of by grace alone contrasted first with the Roman Catholic’s, and then with that of Cheap Grace.
Catholic Versus Reformed
Over the course of their discussion, Roman Catholic and Reformed Christian discovered they use identical terms but with significantly different meanings.
Justification
The first impasse is the meaning of justification itself. When the Catholic catechism states that justification is of grace, he understands it as “not only the remissions of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man” (1989, emphasis added). Justification, in other words, includes sanctification and regeneration. Indeed, to the Catholic, justification embraces “the whole scope of the Christian life” (The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands of Falls, 744).
Justification, in the Roman conception, is an ongoing process, rising and falling, being attained by the grace of the sacraments and possibly lost through a failure of the sinner to persevere in faith and works and the sacraments of the church. Justification, for the Catholic, concerns what God continually does in man.
“Justification, for the Protestant, concerns what God declares over him before he does anything in him.”
Opposed, the Reformed Christian insists that justification is a “legal act, the declaration of the forgiveness of sin and the imputation of righteousness.” In fact, the Catholic counsel of Trent, in response to the Reformation, declared them damned who taught that “men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost [Romans 5:5], and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, by which we are justified, is only the favor of God” (Canon xi). Justification, for the Protestant, concerns what God declares over him, by faith, while the justified is still ungodly (Romans 4:5).
Righteousness
Second, and related, the two disagree about “righteousness.” For the Catholic, justifying righteousness is not Christ’s perfection accredited (that is, imputed) to the sinner’s account. Rather the Catholic means “the rectitude of divine love.” With justification, he says, “faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts, and obedience to the divine will is granted to us” (catechism, 1991). And this infusion comes through the sacrament of Baptism: “Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith” (1992).
For the Reformers, a different notion of righteousness was reclaimed — a righteousness revealed in the gospel (Romans 1:17). The good news is that sinners — dead in their trespasses, sins, and unrighteousness — can, through faith in Jesus’s perfect life, substitutionary death, and validating resurrection, have their sins forgiven and Jesus’s own perfect righteousness counted as theirs by union with him. As was long prophesied, the Suffering Servant would “make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11).
Luther distinguished alien righteousness — Christ’s perfections, outside of us, applied to us legally in justification — and proper righteousness — our own righteousness worked out as a result. Catholic teaching combines the two. Paul, however, makes the contrast clear: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:4–5). Paul staked his life and eternity on “the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:8–9) — a righteousness that doesn’t foremost make us just but accounts us just in Christ.
Grace ‘Alone’
All this leads to the fact that for Roman Catholic, justification cannot be by grace alone as Reformed Christians understand it. Catholicism teaches, “Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom” (catechism, 1993). Since justification includes the inherent, lived-out righteousness of the believer to keep it, “the formal cause of justification refers both to God and to man” (Doctrine, 743). God enlists humans as partners in justification. “In the end, eternal life is both a grace promised and a reward given for good works and merits” (Doctrine, 744).
Lutherans and Catholics of modern times created a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in which they write,
By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works. (article 15)
“For Roman Catholic, justification cannot be by grace alone as Reformed Christians understand it.”
But what is meant “by grace alone”? Leonardo De Chirco writes, “For the Catholic Church, ‘by grace alone’ means that grace is intrinsically, constitutionally, and necessarily linked to the sacrament, to the church that administers it, and then to the works implemented by it.” Still in line with Trent, “grace is necessarily sacramental and seen inside a synergistic, dynamic process of salvation” (Doctrine, 752–753).
This is not “by grace alone” as Luther understood it. Justification, as Carl Trueman summarizes, places “the believer’s salvation outside himself, in the action of God. The very fact that justification for Luther is a declaration of God, a word that comes from the outside, underscores and intensifies the idea that salvation is all of grace” (Grace Alone, 124).
Reformed Christians, then and now, insist that justification by grace alone allows no talk of merit. Christ allows no sidekicks. The Catholic view entails divine grace that is undeserved assistance to get those “capable of God” going, and stands by through the sacraments of the church to help collaborate in salvation. The Reformed understands it as the decisive gifting of perfect righteousness once and for all to those hopelessly condemned in sin. God becomes 100% for us on the sole basis of Christ’s righteousness. Then, once he is for us (fully justified), we grow, by the Spirit, in our own lived-out righteousness. The Catholic view necessitates the undeserved help of God in salvation; the Reformed view, the unilateral acquittal and divine pronouncement of “Righteous!” at the first instant of being joined to Christ by faith.
Reformed Versus Cheap Grace
“I knew it,” Cheap Grace interrupts, relieved. “Justification is all of grace — grace alone — now until the end! No matter how I live, no matter what sins I still fall into, the good news of the gospel states that God sees Jesus when he looks at me. Justified by grace alone!”
“This is the problem with Protestant theology,” complains Roman Catholic. “It does not take obedience and sin seriously. Does Paul not charge us to ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’ (Philippians 2:12)? Justification is no license to continue sinning without consequence.”
It was in response to this that Reformed Christian and Cheap Grace began to realize deep distinctions between them. After some time, Reformed Christian began calling him “Cheap Grace,” a name first coined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
“Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer said, “means the justification of sin without justification of the sinner. . . [it is] grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (Cost of Discipleship, 43, 45). Cheap Grace plans to have heaven without holiness, the salvation without sanctification, forgiveness of sin without forsaking of sin. He speaks of justification ‘by grace alone’ as a deer’s head mounts motionless upon the wall. It is but the carcass of orthodoxy.
Reformed Christian understood the grace of justification always brings the Holy Spirit and transformation. The same grace that redeems us, also “trains us to say ‘no’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12). The grace that justifies — manifest in and inseparable from the Person of God’s grace, Jesus Christ — also sanctifies us. It is grace to be acquitted and reckoned as holy, and grace also to grow in holiness.
To Luther, as the other Reformers, justifying grace was costly grace.
It was grace, for it was like water on parched ground, comfort in tribulation, freedom from the bondage of a self-chosen way, and forgiveness of all [Luther’s] sins. And it was costly, for, so far from dispensing him from good works, it meant that he must take the call to discipleship more seriously than ever before. It was grace because it cost so much, and it cost so much because it was grace. That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation — the justification of the sinner. (Cost of Discipleship, 49)
Costly grace, Reformed Christian insisted to Cheap Grace, is “costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner” (Ibid., 45).
Amazing Grace
Threats to God’s grace in justifying sinners arrive from two fronts.
On the Roman side, we have a new Galatian heresy; the unmaking of grace through accompanied meritorious good works. But the masterpiece of Golgotha has as its caption: Do Not Touch. “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). Ours it is only to receive the blood-painted frame as it is — by grace alone, as a gift.
On the other side, Cheap Grace brings us to the broken elevator of presumption. “This mighty lifter named Grace,” we are told, “is mighty enough to bring us to heaven.” Yet, it is not strong enough to lift us one floor above the world, the flesh, and the devil. James calls the contraption The Grace and Faith of Demons. It might borrow language of alien righteousness, but it applies it as cheap perfume to mask a still rotting corpse.
The Reformers knew the grace of God in justification to be costly, purchased by Christ on the cross, and arriving as first a justifying proclamation, and then consequently as a transforming power, through the Spirit, in sanctification.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8–10)
The grace of justification — received by the instrument of faith alone — never remains alone in the person justified. This grace of our Lord Jesus Christ acquits us in heaven’s court, and trains us to live holy lives on earth. Grace loves living for Jesus — for Jesus is the perfect manifestation of the grace of God. This gospel grace of God — the kind that washes over us divine commendation and divine life — as opposed to its perversions, is worthy of the name, “Amazing.”
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2023 Godward Life Panel
Brian Tabb: I’m going to start off with a question for Pastor John. You wrote a book on Foundations for Lifelong Learning. In your talk, you mentioned something that may have surprised some people here, that you had new insights into this text in the Gospel of Matthew, which you wrote your PhD on, have taught, and have read for countless years. You said, “I saw this text totally new this week.” Share with us a little bit more about how that happens, that kind of new learning, even as somebody who has walked with the Lord for all these years, to offer some encouragement for this group — whether they’re near the beginning of their Christian life or advanced — to not settle for old insights, but keep going, keep pressing deeper into God’s Word.
John Piper: Well, it’s a no-brainer to believe and to say that the Bible, in every text, is inexhaustible. There is always more light to break forth, as the old Puritans used to say. There are angles, connections, implications, and roots that you haven’t seen. That’s the basic assumption. I’m cursed and blessed by being regularly perplexed. It’s a curse because I think it damps, at times, my praise. It’s hard to praise when you’re flabbergasted about the meaning of a text. I don’t like having praise to be a problem. I think we’re made to praise. Answering questions is a means to the end. It’s not the end. It’s just a necessary evil, and would that we could all see things at a flash.
That’s the way I am. I see problems everywhere. Being a lover of the inerrancy of the Bible, I know those problems are always my fault. They’re not God’s fault and not Jesus’s fault. There’s no fault in God, no fault in Jesus, and no fault in the Scriptures. There’s a fault in me. Some of my limitations are not faulty. I’m a finite person; that’s not a fault. But I am a sinner and I am culturally biased. I’ve got family issues, and there are all kinds of reasons why I would see things wrongly, so it’s both a curse and I think it’s also a great blessing.
My wife deals with this more than anybody. I’m just always a critical person about everything I read. She hates it when I go, “Ugh.” I’m reading something, reading the news, and I say, “Ugh!” She doesn’t want to hear this. She says, “Be positive, Johnny,” but she knows, as I do and others do, that it has produced great fruit for me to be troubled. God has opened my eyes to see many things I would not have otherwise seen, and I think the practical payoff of your question would be that at 77, I’m working my way through 2 Corinthians in Look at the Book. I’m creating episodes for Look at the Book by working through 2 Corinthians.
On my blitz that I just finished, I worked through 1 Corinthians 7–16. I saw new things every day, because I put Biblearc on one screen and Logos on the other screen. Email sits quietly over here on the other screen. I have my Wacom tablet on my desk, where I do my doodling, and I just look at the Book all day long. That’s all I do is look at the Book.
I arc a paragraph, and in arcing it, I have 10 questions. How does that relate to that? What’s the meaning of that? How did he use that? How does that relate back to chapter 7? Now, what would you do if you had 10 questions as you read a paragraph? The only thing I know to do is get out a piece of paper, take a pencil, and write them down. As you write them down, possible answers come to your mind, and you jot down the possible answer. As soon as you jot down the possible answer, other ideas come to your mind, and that little piece of paper becomes gold. It’s your discovery. Okay, I’ve got to stop. That’s enough.
Tabb: That’s great.
Piper: Thank you for asking.
Tabb: I think that in a few of the sessions, we’ve talked about typology or patterns. I think it would be helpful to just give a little bit more clarity, a little bit more help, especially in distinguishing between the sorts of patterns that the biblical authors themselves are drawing attention to or wanting us to see, and those that might maybe tell us more about our own creativity than about what the biblical writers had in mind. What sort of guidance would you give us as we try to distinguish between clear examples of biblical typology or more tenuous connections, and especially those that might be somewhere in between? We’ll start with Joshua, and then if others want to chime in on that as well, they can.
Joshua Greever: I remember, when I was an MDiv student, we would have debates amongst ourselves about whether such and such a person in the Old Testament was a type of Christ. These are the sorts of debates that seminarians will have, you know? One takeaway that I got from all of those discussions was this: to the degree to which the biblical text makes those connections for us, to that same degree we can be certain that it is a type of Christ.
Here I’m thinking of individual persons in the Old Testament but also major events in the Old Testament and major institutions of the Old Testament. Those are your three categories: major persons, major events, and major institutions of the Old Testament. To the degree in which later Old Testament writers pick those things up and comment on them, and then, of course, New Testament writers, we can make connections. To what degree do the New Testament writers actually draw those connections for us?
Sometimes scholars can be quite imaginative and creative in ways that the text doesn’t really point us in, so I think one safeguard is to go where the text takes you. What the text says, let’s say what that says, and if the text doesn’t quite draw it out for us maybe as we would have expected it to, then let’s be a little cautious. Maybe there’s a suggestion there, but let’s be cautious. That’s my first explanation for that.
David Mathis: Would you distinguish between commentators being imaginative and preachers being imaginative?
Greever: Maybe you could give me an example of what you’re thinking of. I think both can be quite imaginative.
Piper: There must be something behind that question.
Mathis: Well, I mean whether you might encourage one to be more or less imaginative, depending on what particular task they’re doing. If you are writing a commentary, I think you might want to limit those connections to particular grammatical markers or syntax or something that’s demonstrably in the text. But as a preacher, with your half-hour slot, and the possibility for making theological connections, I think I may encourage preachers to lean in more to those conceptual connections, while not pretending they’re demonstrably in the text. I think, the ones that are in the text, point them out and make the connections, but also that there would be encouragement for preachers to make conceptual, topical, theological links to Jesus in seeking to preach to the church in the context of worship. Thoughts on that?
Greever: I think good preaching not only says what the text says, but shows the people how the biblical author arrived at that conclusion. In other words, preachers should be following the logic of the biblical author, because we want to understand how to read our Bibles better when we regularly sit under the preaching of the Word. So I agree. I think, if we come across a text that is suggesting connections, maybe it’s an Old Testament text that’s suggesting connections to Christ, then I think the preacher would want to draw those connections out for the sake of greater faith, hope, and love.
Piper: But when you say “draw them out,” or you say “draw attention to conceptual connections,” do you mean that you can get from those connections a “Thus saith the Lord”?
Mathis: No.
Piper: That’s important, because my principle is, which agrees with that, to the degree that your audience is perplexed at how you saw what you saw, you lose authority. Therefore, I don’t encourage pastors to lean in unless they say it really carefully. I kind of tell them to lean away. In other words, I want them to find their meaning right there in the text or if, like in the one I just preached on, he’s quoting something back there, then we have to go back there to see what’s really there.
Maybe you have in mind Spurgeon. I’m listening to his autobiography right now. Spurgeon couldn’t open his mouth without quoting the Bible. Prick him; he bleeds Bibline. But the way he used the Bible was varied. He’d be walking down the street and see a dog and quote a psalm about a dog. “The dogs will not say to Israel . . .” What is that? That’s just a Bible-saturated person speaking Bible over dogs and sidewalks. That, to me, is a coloring of your sermon, but man, I so much want to blow people away with what is mandated as truth. It’s true.
I really think Jesus is God. That’s not a guess. I really think he’s a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek, an eternal sacrifice. I mean, there are so many absolute certainties in the Bible, thousands of them, that are glorious, breathtaking, and jaw-dropping. Why would we want to speculate? Just one more thing. You can see how skeptical I am about typology.
I was at TGC last week, and those speakers were pretty creative in some ways, and they were all good. They’re all good. However, one of them was drawing some patterns and connections. I was sitting there thinking, Maybe. Now, “maybe” is not good when you’re responding to preaching. You don’t want to think, “Maybe the pastor has something.” You’re going to preach every weekend. You don’t want people saying, “Maybe he’s got something there.” What good is that? I said something to somebody afterwards, wondering whether they felt similar. One guy said something to me. I like him so much because he speaks my language. He said, “Yeah, isn’t it amazing when guys find things in the Bible and God says, ‘Wow’?” I love it.
Tabb: Well, let’s press in a little bit different direction, especially thinking about some of the practical implications about reflecting on the life of David, the joy of the servant king. Maybe we’ll start with David Mathis, fittingly. What lessons do you think David’s life has to offer us, in terms of servant-leadership? He’s obviously the King of Israel, but just walking with the Lord and that balance of strength and gentleness. What help do you think we could have in that category of servant-leadership?
Mathis: That’s good. It is a recent question whether we should use the term servant-leadership anymore. I think this would not have been even asked 20 years ago or 10 years ago. Everyone just assumed, servant-leader, of course, absolutely, servant-leader.
I think it’s a fair question to ask, and I think I would defend its use. It’s a helpful question to ask, because we can clarify in what sense we mean it. If servant-leader means that the leader empties himself of his post, abdicates his role, empties himself of his power and ability that could be used to help people, and he basically adopts the whims and demands and requirements of others, then we don’t do that. That’s not what leaders do. Leaders don’t cower to the demands or requirements or whims of people when they think they know what’s best for themselves at the moment.
But if servant-leader means that the position of leadership, its posts, its abilities, its authority, is used for the good of others rather than to take advantage of others so that there’s a service of their good, whether they’re seeing it or not, then it’s good. We’re defining their good on God’s terms, not on their own terms. To serve them in the nature of the work, that’s the essence of Christian leadership.
That’s what Paul would call being workers for the joy of the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:24). It’s not that the Corinthians are making certain demands and Paul empties himself of his power and cowers to their demands, but on God’s terms, Paul has thoughts and ideas for what’s best for them in Christ, and he makes it for their joy. This is the Christian Hedonistic point, and it’s so helpful in this. Servant-leadership doesn’t only pursue the good of others and merely crucify self, but crucifies sin in me, the leader, and pursues a better joy than what 1 Peter calls “shameful gain” (1 Peter 5:2).
There’s a kind of shameful gain in leadership that you should be ashamed of. You’re pursuing a certain gain that is private comforts, pleasures, and personal gain to the loss of the people, or for David, personal gain to the loss of the nation. That would be a shameful gain. But there is a gain that’s without shame, a gain for the leader that’s commensurate with leading the people well and for their good. On God’s terms, the good leader looks and sees their good, their joy, and makes it his joy — which is a better joy than private joy — to work for their joy. That would be, I think, a kind of servant-leadership worth defending.
If you want a text for that, a model of that in Jesus, if we’re talking in terms of emptying, that’s Philippians 2, right? He emptied himself. He did not empty himself of divinity, of divine power, but emptied himself of the prerogative to not come and get messy in a sinful work, and have sinners act on him to crucify him. He emptied himself of that prerogative, so that he might serve and take his joy in the joy of his people. The emptying is not an emptying of his ability and leadership and post, but it’s a taking it upon himself to do good to others and seek their joy. I would defend servant-leadership on those terms.
Tabb: I think if we had a fifth session, I wonder if the fifth session would be on David, the friend? For example, his friendship with Jonathan is one of the more developed masculine relationships that you see in the Old Testament. You also have some really painful friendship examples of betrayal and that sort of thing within David’s life. I’m wondering if any of you would like to speak to reflections on what we might glean from David’s friendship with Jonathan, his experience of betrayal and loss interpersonally, and even just how that might connect with your own experience of life in ministry.
Greever: I’m happy to get us started, but I want to hear from you guys, too. It did strike me in my study of 1 Samuel how the kind of friendship between David and Jonathan that’s worth emulating is clearly not a mercenary friendship. That’s so clearly the case from Jonathan’s perspective, because from Jonathan’s perspective he doesn’t gain at all, from a worldly point of view, in handing over his weaponry, his armor, his robe, and saying, “I’m happy for you to be king, not me.” There’s clearly not a mercenary kind of sense here of friendship.
I think that’s worth reflecting on in our own friendships. Why do we want to befriend that person? Well, the answer is not so that they can scratch my back and make much of me in the world, so that everyone thinks I’m amazing because they’re connected to me, or something like that. That’s my first thought. It’s just kind of amazing how Jonathan is so willing to give up what would have been his throne. I’m curious to see what you guys would like to add to that remarkable friendship.
Mathis: I want to know more about Jonathan. Put that on the list of questions to ask in heaven. I want to know more about his character, his humility. As you said last night, as you put those forward — Jonathan strengthened his hand in God and then David strengthened himself in Yahweh, in that order — it made me think, does Jonathan excel David in spiritual maturity? Maybe not, maybe it’s totally mutual, but is David learning a spiritual maturity there, not just through the wilderness, but through Jonathan?
Then, very practically, I loved the moments where you lingered over strengthening his hand in God. That is so good for meditation, for application. It brings Hebrews 10:24 to mind, which says, “Provoke each other to love and good deeds.” It’s about knowing someone well enough that you don’t just provoke them as general humanity, but you’re close to them. You know what pushes their buttons, in good ways, and you provoke that person, not to anger, but you provoke them to love and good deeds. I’m assuming that’s what David received from Jonathan in that context.
Greever: I think that’s powerful, because in our world, friendship is often cloaked as simply, “I’m going to affirm you,” right? That’s what friendship is, and if you don’t affirm me, you’re not my friend. This happens all the time. But that’s not the way Jonathan is toward David. He tells him the truth. Now, he does affirm him, that is true. So, affirmation is not a problem.
But the nature of friendship is more than just simply, “I’m going to affirm you for whatever you think.” If that were the case, it would’ve sounded something like, “Don’t worry, David. You’re going to be fine, because you’ve got what it takes within you. Just believe in yourself. Just be strong for who you are, and it’ll turn out well in the end, and you be you.” That kind of a thing. That’s not at all the way it comes out. He strengthened his hand in God. I think there’s a definite difference between that and the way we couch friendship today as simply affirming someone.
Mathis: There are connections here to the previous question. If you’re talking about servant-leadership or relationships in which you are letting God define the terms of what’s good, there may be encouraging words to speak and genuinely affirm things. Other things need to be exposed, and we must do that.
I love what it says: He “strengthened his hand in God” (1 Samuel 23:16). This was a Godward strengthening. That opens up possibilities of particular texts to quote in a certain moment. You might express a truth stronger or softer depending on knowing that brother, his life, and that particular moment in his life, and doing that in a Godward way. It’s not strengthening his hand in himself. It’s not that. It’s strengthening his hand in God.
Tabb: Let’s stay with that. Can any of you think of an example where another friend in the Lord has strengthened your hand in God, has had that Jonathan role at a particular moment in your life and ministry to help you keep going? Anybody have one to share?
Kenny Stokes: I’ll tell you one from John Piper to me. That’s probably why it feels awkward. When I was called by God, confirmed by my wife and the elders in the congregation to take this role here at Bethlehem 25 years ago, and then again more recently. This is my seventh job at Bethlehem. John Piper came up to me after my seventh appointment and said, “Kenny, the good hand of the Lord is upon you.” I don’t know if you remember saying that. But there was a word, and it was very encouraging, very Godward, very confirming, very contextual, and I was personally strengthened.
Mathis: Seeing you sitting here, Kenny, reminds me of the time you and John and I were tag-teaming 1 Thessalonians in this room on Wednesday nights. This was probably 15 years ago. I came in and wanted to do the first session really Socratic. There were dozens of people, and I came in just asking all sorts of questions. I was asking questions, but I did it too much, so I leaned too far into asking questions, at least pedagogically as a teacher.
John sent me this email the next day. It was 1,500 to 1,800 words. He was very gracious. He handled me very graciously, and he was also very clear, “We can do better.” At the time, I was helping him with his calendar. I thought, “John Piper doesn’t have time for 1,800 words to me and Kenny about how we can do better on Wednesday nights.”
Stokes: You got 1,800, I got nine.
Mathis: Yours was just affirming. He was exercising Sam Crabtree’s affirmation ratio. But it was so helpful. That brings to mind another email I got not too long ago. I sent John an article I had worked on. I just wanted him to see it before I moved it on in the editorial process. He wrote back. I remember this exact quote. He said, “This bears the marks of haste.” You know what? You’ve encouraged me enough over the years, I felt loved in that. I thought, “I’m so glad I didn’t push this on to our publication. I need to go back to the desk and do this better. I don’t want to bear the marks of haste in a public article.” So, thank you.
Piper: You’re welcome.
Tabb: Let’s think more about another relationship that David had with Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth. This is a fascinating character in the Samuel narrative, and we see David’s surprising treatment of Mephibosheth. Maybe we could start with you, David, and then others can jump in on what we see there. What lessons do we glean from how he treats Jonathan’s son, who would have then been in the line of Saul, whose throne David takes over?
Mathis: The way it begins in 2 Samuel 9 is that David, having made all these military victories in 2 Samuel 8, is victorious wherever he goes. It’s one thing after another. David is a great military leader. You get to chapter 9 and the kingdom is established. He’s successful, victorious, triumphant, and he takes the initiative in 2 Samuel 9:1 to say, “Is there someone from the house of Saul that I can show kindness to for Jonathan’s sake?”
This is amazing. This is not like Joab. This is not the kind of question that comes out of Joab, saying, “How can I show kindness?” The reason it’s fresh is that I wanted so badly for this to be in the talk yesterday morning, and this is one of the things I had to cut because I didn’t want you to be late for your workshops. But there is a parallel here from Psalm 18:35, where David says, “[God’s] gentleness made me great.” God’s gentleness came to David and took root in him, and David was gentle with others.
Here in 2 Samuel 9:3, he says that he wants to show him “the kindness of God.” He’s not just showing him the kindness of David. He’s showing him the kindness of God. God has been kind to David, which has changed David, taken root in David, and he wants to show God’s kindness to Mephibosheth, to someone from Saul’s house. Even though 10 years ago Saul came after him and tried to kill him, he wants to show kindness to Saul’s house.
I do wonder, as someone who’s lived with this name (David) for more than 40 years, who is said to be a man after God’s own heart in Acts 13:22. It didn’t work with Saul. We’re looking for a man after God’s own heart. I wonder if it means that when it says he is a man after God’s own heart. Acts 13:22 says, “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.”
I don’t think that means that David merely does God’s will — that God has a heart, it manifests in a will, David hears the will, and he just does the will. I don’t think that’s all that’s at play, but this: that God has a heart, a kind of heart that manifests a will, and David has that kind of heart. The reason he does God’s will is he does it from the heart. He doesn’t just check the boxes and do what God commands. He has come to have God’s own heart, and I think Psalm 18:35 points to gentleness as an aspect of that heart. Second Samuel 9 points to kindness, that he wants to show kindness.
In Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son, we see the kind of heart of the father that goes out to his son. He wants to run to greet him. That kind of heart has come to be in David as well. David has experienced that grace from God, and he wants to extend grace in the appropriate places. He’s the leader of Israel. He can’t just go around distributing grace to the Philistines, and grace to the Edomites. He has to fulfill his role as king, and he’s on the lookout for ways that he can extend God’s grace, God’s kindness, in fitting circumstances that don’t compromise the good of the nation, but show God’s kindness to someone in Saul’s house.
Greever: If I can push us toward Jesus, I think Jesus does that, too, climactically, right? I’m thinking there is a connection. I mean, you mentioned the parable of the prodigal son, but you know there’s that one text in Isaiah 55:3 that talks about “the kindnesses of David.” It’s plural there, right? Sometimes it’s translated as the steadfast love or acts of David or something, which is in Acts 13, right? The man after God’s own heart, I think, shows up as this. It is kindness, but it’s steadfast kindnesses, so it is kindness that God has promised and he is faithful to keep, which Jesus does climatically as the man after God’s own heart.
Piper: Yep, yep.
Mathis: I remember when you went to Cambridge, to Tyndale House, you did a commencement address for the TBI guys, now BCS guys, where you talked about how a dead dog loves a king. Do you remember that?
Piper: I remember the title.
Mathis: It was about Mephibosheth. There’s another part of the Mephibosheth story at the other end.
Piper: Two very different impacts of that story on me other than what has been said is, number one, when he comes back, Mephibosheth, he wants to give him what he deserves. He says, “I don’t need anything. You’re back. I don’t care about inheritance. You’re back.” I just thought, I want to love Jesus like that. I want to love my king that way. Just give me a little teeny little corner in heaven, just a little teeny shack if you’re there.
Number two, if you’re a pastor or a leader in any way, one of the hardest things for me, being as indecisive as I can be, is that you’re confronted with so many decisions that look like 60-40 decisions. I don’t know how to do outreach. I don’t know how to help the homeless. I don’t know how to do pastoral care. I don’t know if we should hire a new person. I don’t know if we should buy the property. I don’t know. Ah, indecisiveness.
David comes back, and Ziba has lied about Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth says, “I didn’t betray you. He’s lying.” David doesn’t know what’s true. He’s a king. He’s got a kingdom to run. He can’t do research on this. What does he do? He says, “Half for you, Ziba, and half for Mephibosheth.” That was an unjust decision. Ziba didn’t deserve a thing. He should’ve been shot, which he eventually was, I think. Ziba was a bad character, and Mephibosheth was gold. But David splits it 50-50 because he has work to do.
As a pastor, I feel like I had to make decisions. I cannot just dink around here. We’ve got a big church, and things have to get done. Somebody’s got to stop the buck. Kenny is my pastor now, right here, and he has to do this. He can get as much input as he wants, but he has to make decisions. That little story right there was very liberating for me.
Tabb: Let’s go to the end of your talk, Pastor Kenny. You closed with powerful encouragement for those who are stuck in David’s situation. You said, “May the joy of the Lord pull you out of it.” I’m just wondering if you can pull on that thread a little bit. What would that look like, practically, for the joy of the Lord to get somebody unstuck from serious sin? And I think we can also add to that: How might the joy of the Lord help to keep us out of such situations, as well?
Stokes: I said that because, with the assignment of David’s sin with Bathsheba, I not only had 2 Samuel 11–12, but I also had Psalm 51 and Psalm 32, which you made the point that the text in 2 Samuel doesn’t mention joy. So, how come I kind of hung it all on joy? It’s because we get in David’s head in Psalm 51, which he wrote when he confessed to Nathan. Then, I think we get in David’s head again in Psalm 32, which I’m guessing he wrote after the event, just enjoying, celebrating, the blessedness of forgiven sin.
The journey out of preventing sin, causing David to run downstairs and sing psalms instead of continuing to look at Bathsheba, is the fight for joy in God, just like the thing that would keep him causes him to stop this concealment. I mean, it was really ugly when I reviewed that stuff. I didn’t remember it being so ugly. David says, “Here, I have a message for you to give to your commander. You give it to him.” And it says, “Kill him.” I just thought that was really ugly. What keeps you from that? It’s the joy in the Lord, that you would enjoy Jesus more than your concealment.
Then, likewise with the confession. Read those two Psalms. I mean, David is in misery with his sin. He’s in misery concealing. His bones are getting crushed and probably eight times in those two psalms, he’s moving out of that, into confession, into forgiveness, into the grace of God by joy. I just saw this tractor beam of joy in the Lord, to pull us out of our sin and, when we’re in our sin, to pull us back to Jesus and, preventatively, to keep us from our sin. I just love the way the three lenses kind of went together: the narrative, the personal confession, and then his epilogue, his reflections on the blessedness of forgiven sin. I don’t know if that answers your question.
Tabb: Anybody want to add to that?
Piper: It is profoundly illuminating to realize nobody sins out of duty. There’s only one reason people sin: it’s going to feel good. Life is going to get better. It’s a lie. The feeling good is true, but the lie is life is going to go better because you’ve chosen this path. If that’s true, if pleasure and being drawn out with desire, not duty, is what is happening — as if someone thinks you have to get up in the morning and sin today because it’s your duty to sin — then that’s why this works. There’s only one way to fight desire, and that’s with a superior desire. I mean, you can try to fight desire with duty. It’ll last a while, like, “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. I can’t. Stop.” That just won’t last for a lifetime. It won’t.
I was talking to a missionary — we all know who this is — who went to 18 prostitutes, and then left the mission and left his wife. I sat down with him, and I said, “What happened? What happened? You were so effective. You were a good missionary. What in the world happened?” Here’s what he said. He said, “It just got too hard to fight anymore.” He was saying, “I can’t do this. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t,” and there needed to be an explosive joy, the expulsive power of a new affection, pushing the need for prostitutes out of his heart. Push them out. Your job in life is to be happier with Jesus than with a prostitute, happier with Jesus than with pornography, happier with Jesus than with money. That’s the battle.
That’s what we do here. Serious joy is that. Christian Hedonism is that. You will fail in the Christian life if you don’t realize that sin is driven by desire for pleasure, and Jesus provides a superior pleasure. If you don’t feel that, you’ve got work to do. That’s the war. Fight for joy. So, amen to what Kenny said.
Tabb: David, do you want to double-click on anything related to masculine strength and gentleness and what that looks like practically? Maybe think of a situation where it maybe needs a little bit more strength or a little bit more gentleness or just the right combination, the multidimensional approach.
Mathis: I think one thing I could clarify is that we’re prone to go to these extremes, like, “Oh, I need to always be this strong man with backbone, and never give ground,” or you always act with grace and parent with grace and have gentleness and kindness nonstop. The call is for wisdom. You’re being invited into the life of wisdom in the life of David. If you’ve developed a concept that leadership is only strength, then David is a corrective. If you’ve developed a concept that leadership is only kindness, and never battles against the Philistines, then David is a corrective.
These two things are mingling all the time, in terms of moments to manifest particular backbone in reading the moment, knowing this is what’s needed. A fool needs to be answered according to his folly at this moment. Other times, the fool should not be answered according to his folly, but with a kind of kindness or a cushioning or a gentleness or a patience, a manifestation of humility.
Being a parent has helped tremendously with this, in terms of having people in my house where I don’t just have interaction with them and then they go away, but we still live under the same roof. This is not an answer. It’s a wisdom call for parents. Wisdom is needed, and you don’t respond the same way every time. If you always respond with strength, you crush them. If you always respond with kindness or always respond with grace, if that’s the lead note with no strength, then you get them off in the wrong direction and teach them wrong things about the world.
What we need as parents, and what we need as leaders, is to have the backbone, to have strong arms, and know those moments when you need to have the gentle hand, the gentle touch. I think a very helpful thing to think about is going deeper into the characters of Joab and David, which are mixed characters. Joshua talked last night about David being mixed. Joab’s mixed, too. I mean, that’s a glorious moment in 2 Samuel 10, where Joab and Abishai are back-to-back, and he says, “I’ll take the Ammonites; you take the Syrians. I’ll help you out. Do this for the glory of God.” I mean, that’s their glory moment.
We shouldn’t think of Joab as all negative, and Abishai seems more righteous to me than Joab, but it’s still, “Sons of Zeruiah, what do I have to do with you?” But here’s an insight to Joab’s character. Joab acts from personal offense when he takes out Abner. There are probably two things at play there in taking out Abner. One, that’s Saul’s commander, and Joab too was a commander. David was going to have to choose between two commanders, and Joab was looking laterally at another commander, thinking, “That guy could take my spot. It would be nice to knock him off.” Also, he knew he killed his brother, Asahel, in battle. Now, the war is over, but Joab takes Abner out for revenge.
There’s this personal offense. There’s a concern about his personal standing, perhaps, in taking out Abner, and he does the same with Amasa. Joab has a kind of personal focus, a selfishness, a nursing of personal offenses and wanting revenge. David is the opposite of that. I mean, Shimei is throwing stones at him and cursing him, and Abishai is ready to just go take his head off, which might actually be a righteous action.
If you’re Abishai, you’re one of the mighty men. David shouldn’t say that, but it might be Abishai’s role to say, “Hey, king, should I take his head off?” That might’ve been a good thing. Then it’s David’s role to say, “No, the Lord has told him to curse me for my iniquity, because of what Nathan said. And I am trusting God to be gracious to me. Don’t take Shimei out.” Then, when he comes back, he doesn’t take him out either, but he promises, “As long as I’m king, you’re good.”
David does not take personal vengeance. He doesn’t nurse and harbor personal offense like Joab does. Joab’s actions that we see as violent, as out of place, as this manifestation of raw, manly strength without the appropriate gentleness, having a lot of personal focus, a lot of self-focus; whereas, David has a bigger heart. He includes in his joy the joy of his kingdom, the joy of others, and is able to make a wide-hearted, deeper-joy decision by getting beyond self-focus and not nursing those personal offenses.
Tabb: That’s great. Okay, final question. I’m happy for any of you to answer this. How does the life of David help you to go Godward?
Piper: He wrote a lot of psalms. I love the Psalms. They’re Godward. That’s my short answer.
Tabb: The sweet psalmist of Israel.
Piper: That’s my wife’s favorite book in the Bible. I think she’s almost right.
Mathis: Romans?
Piper: Probably. I’ve analyzed why that is for her and so many people. In Romans, you have to do a lot of thinking to get to the right application. But with the Psalms, your heart is right out there. His heart is just flowing, and that’s a wonderful thing. We need the Psalms so desperately to model an affectional relationship with God. In Romans, you have to work at it.
Greever: I think David helps me to go Godward inasmuch as he typifies Christ. Like I tried to show, I am most helped to go Godward when I refresh my soul in the gospel and what God has done for me in Christ. David helps me remember what God has done for me in Christ, both by showing those similarities between David and Jesus, but also the dissimilarities.
For instance, I didn’t mention this last night, but David did the madman routine, you know, in Gath. I can’t imagine Jesus doing that. Can you imagine Jesus, in front of Pontius Pilate, deciding the only way out right now is to pretend to be a madman? Jesus would never do the madman routine, and that just shows that Jesus is so much better than this guy who was trying to get one step ahead of Saul in the Old Testament.
I think, when I read 1 Samuel, Jesus just shines. Jesus is amazing when I read 1 Samuel, not only because of those positive examples, wherein David prefigures Christ, but also because he’s so much better than what this character is in the narrative. Inasmuch as I see that indirect route, I’m reminded of God’s kindness toward me in the Greater David.
Mathis: There is an extraordinary role that David has in Scripture. I mean, for Jesus to be the Son of David is remarkable. All the pointers, all the types, the similarities, the dissimilarities — he is pointing to Jesus more than anyone else in the Old Testament. I mean, it’s a remarkable thing. Study David’s life, and I think you get more than Moses, Abraham, and the whole list of the Old Testament celebrities.
I hesitate to say this, because my name is David. Over the years, it’s been difficult to fully appreciate David because the name is such an old hat to me. In having this conference theme and approaching it and getting ready for it, it was so helpful to see what a massive role he has in Jesus being the Son of David. So, objectively and externally, he points to Jesus, typifies Jesus, and that’s where we look to feed the joy, as we talked about.
Then, we don’t have anyone else’s inner heart laid out before God in as much detail as we have with David’s. This relates to the subjective element you’re talking about, John. He says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11), and, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1), and, “Your steadfast love is better than life” (Psalm 63:3).
The Christian Hedonistic texts that we love, one after another, are an expression of David’s heart for God, the God whom we know so far more now because of the one David typified in Jesus. There’s the external pointing to Jesus, and then there’s seeing all the internal machinations that are now all the greater because Jesus has come, because of David.
Stokes: I’d probably bounce right off of that, in part, from what I just stuck my head into the last two or three weeks. Not only does David point us to our all-satisfying God, to the enoughness of God himself for us and all that God promises to be for us in Jesus, to Jesus as our joy, to our hope in him over and over again, but then also the misery of when he’s separate from God. Those are the sin passages, where he says things like, “Your hand was heavy upon me” (Psalm 32:4).
Somehow, I feel like I want to get in line to run the race behind David. I want to go for the joy, and when I drift off the path, I want to go for the joy. When I drift off the path, I want the misery that David articulates to get back on the path and enjoy fellowship with God and his Son through the forgiveness that’s ours in Christ. We have an advocate that brings us back, and David just models that and speaks it in that little collection. I thoroughly enjoyed Psalm 51, Psalm 32, and the narrative. Joy is laced all the way through the horrible narrative, and it’s pulling him through.
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The Three Most Important Words in Prayer
As a child, I had an unhealthy fear of voicemails.
Since voicemails now are something of an endangered species, this may require some explanation. When I was in school, most phones were still attached to walls and didn’t have caller ID. So, if you called and no one picked up, no one would know that it was you who called — unless you left a voicemail. Seems easy (and safe) enough, right?
One day (I was probably ten), I called to see if a friend across the street wanted to play, but no one picked up. I hung up. A few minutes later, I called again. No answer, I hung up. I did this a few more times over the next hour. My mom noticed my strange behavior and asked what I was doing.
“I was just calling to see if my friend wanted to play, but no one’s home.”
“Well, why don’t you just leave a message?”
I tensed up. “Oh no, no. . . . I’ll just try again in a few minutes.”
“No, Marshall, that’s rude to keep calling like that. You really should leave a voicemail.”
“No, really, Mom, it’s not a big deal. They don’t mind.”
“No,” she said firmly, “you’re going to pick up that phone right now and leave a voicemail.”
I waited to see if she was serious, then slowly lifted the instrument of terror from the wall. There was something about being recorded — with no opportunity to delete, or try again, or call timeout — that made me feel exposed. It certainly didn’t help that my (female) friend could be a bit of a bully and relished just about any opportunity to laugh at my expense.
Again, no one answered. The dreaded beep came. My mom stared at me intently. “Hi, uhhh, Jenna. . . . This is Marshall. Umm . . . just wanted to see if you were home and wanted to play. So . . . give me a call when you get back. . . . Umm . . . in Jesus’s name, Amen.”
My mom’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth. Her cheeks strained to fight back laughter. My young, insecure blood boiled. She made me do that. How could she!
It’s funny, but my (tiny) humiliation plays out a common paradox in prayer: Those three words — in Jesus’s name — were already so deeply ingrained in my mind through countless prayers in our home that they instinctively poured out. At the same time, they had become so familiar that they had begun to lose their weight and meaning (so that I blurted them to the 10-year-old girl across the street). Many of us have forgotten, through lots of meals and bedtimes, services and Bible studies, what we hold in these three staggering words: in Jesus’s name.
Six Facets in the Name
Where do we learn to pray in Jesus’s name, anyway? The Lord’s Prayer doesn’t end that way. In fact, when you go looking, you realize that we don’t have any actual prayers in Scripture that end with those words.
We hear people baptize in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38), heal in the name of Jesus (Acts 3:6), teach in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:18), exorcise demons in the name of Jesus (Acts 16:18), and perform wonders in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:30). The apostle Paul goes as far to tell us to do everything we do, in word or deed, “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17). The clearest teaching on praying in Jesus’s name, though, comes from Jesus himself, on the night he was betrayed.
In John 14–16, we have Jesus’s last words to his disciples before he goes to the cross, and in all three chapters he mentions the power of praying in his name: “Whatever you ask in my name” (John 14:13) . . . “Whatever you ask the Father in my name” (John 15:16) . . . . “Whatever you ask of the Father in my name” (John 16:23). In the repetition, we see how critical this kind of prayer will be for followers of Jesus, and we learn at least six reasons for Christians to pray in his name.
1. Access: God listens to you.
When we pray in Jesus’s name, we rehearse our only reason for believing God will actually hear our prayers. We dare to bow before the Father only because the Son chose to bow upon the cross. Before he encourages his disciples to pray this way, Jesus says to them, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). No one comes except in me — but everyone who comes in my name will be received, heard, and loved. His life, cross, and resurrection lift our prayers into heaven.
Jesus goes as far as to say (really listen to what he says here), “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God” (John 16:26–27). In other words, I don’t have to ask him anything for you anymore. No, in me, you can ask the Almighty yourself.
2. Love: God chose you.
God doesn’t only listen to our prayers because Christ died for us, but because, long before his Son was born and took the cross, he had already chosen us as his own. He decided, based on nothing in or about us, to love us and save us in Christ.
“You did not choose me,” Jesus says, “but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” (John 15:16)
I chose you, so that your prayers would have power. That means every prayer we pray in his name is an opportunity to remember the undeserved wonder of our election. The God of heaven and earth, the one who made all that is, the one whom you rejected and assaulted in your sin, chose to love you.
And if he had not chosen you, you would not believe, much less pray. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44; also 6:65).
3. Power: God can do anything.
When Jesus ascended into heaven, he left his disciples, but he didn’t really leave them. Before he rose into the clouds, he said, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). How could he say that as he was literally leaving them? Because he had told them, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16–17, see also 14:25–26).
By the Spirit, Jesus still lives with us, even within us. Therefore, his name is a constant reminder of his abiding, satisfying, empowering presence.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:4–5)
In his name, anything is possible through prayer. Apart from his name, we can do nothing.
4. Safety: God keeps your faith.
As he comes to the end of his final words, he says to his disciples, “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away” (John 16:1). I’ve repeatedly told you (among other things) to pray in my name, so that you will not fall away from me, so that you won’t fall into temptation and make shipwreck of your faith. Fearful days were coming, days that would strain their faith (if possible) to the point of breaking. “In the world you will have tribulation,” he warns them a few verses later. “But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). And in my name, you will too.
So, our prayers in Jesus’s name are not only accomplishing great things out in the world and among those we love, but they’re doing something supernatural inside of us. Through them, God is fortifying our faith in God. He’s exerting his infinite power to guard our love for him (1 Peter 1:5). Prayer is perhaps the single greatest way that God works in us the kind of heart and life that please him and persevere to the end (Philippians 2:12–13).
5. Confidence: God won’t dismiss his Son.
Why won’t the Father ignore prayers in the name of his Son? Jesus tells us, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13–14). The glory of God himself is at stake in our prayers (even our seemingly small or insignificant prayers), and God will not surrender or violate his glory. That means no prayer is insignificant to God. He will answer your prayers in Jesus’s name because he’s fiercely devoted, with all his sovereign might, to the exalting of that name. For God to disregard requests made in the name of Jesus would be to abandon his reason for creating the universe: his glory.
Our prayers, then, aren’t just in the name of Jesus, but for the name of Jesus. And that means, when we pray in this name, we join Jesus in doing what he most loves to do, what he’s utterly and eternally resolved to do, and that is to glorify God.
6. Reward: Your joy will be full.
Jesus gives us at least one more great incentive to pray in his name always and with boldness:
Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. . . . Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23–24)
Just a chapter earlier, he says, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). So, God answers our prayers in Jesus’s name for the sake of his glory — “that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” And God answers our prayers in that name because he wants us to be as happy as possible — “that your joy may be full.” Those are the two great ambitions of a healthy prayer life: the glory of God and our fullest possible joy in him.
And because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, those two ambitions are not really two but one. They’re two sides of the same prayer. John Piper writes,
The unity of these two goals — the glory of God and the joy of his children — is clearly preserved in the act of prayer. Therefore, Christian Hedonists will, above all, be people devoted to earnest prayer. Just as the thirsty deer kneels down to drink at the brook, so the characteristic posture of the Christian Hedonist is on his knees. (Desiring God, 160)
How to End a Prayer
A couple decades after my harrowing voicemail experience, I had another encounter that has shaped how I say these three words. At the time, I was studying in seminary and serving in ministry, regularly leading up front in my local church. During one of the services, I gave the prayer of praise, which strives to give voice to our congregation’s collective gratitude to God for his kindness, his provision, his sovereign and saving love. I had given some serious time preparing to lead our congregation.
After the service, an older man in the faith came up to me and thanked me for the prayer. “I’ve noticed something, though, about your prayers,” he said. I was surprised and a little nervous. Am I doing it wrong? Did I say something heretical? You can still hear the little boy with the corded phone and all those fears. “It’s how you end your prayers,” he said. “You rush through the words — ‘in Jesus’s name.’ They sound like an afterthought. They’re not an afterthought. Slow down on those words. Savor them.”
I’ve never prayed the same since. And so I turn to you, as a good father might with his son. The three most important words in prayer are not words to be rushed or mumbled, but relished and declared. They frame the doorway to fellowship with God — access, love, presence, safety, confidence, joy. Slow down on those words. Savor them.