Audio Transcript

Today we say farewell to our friend, pastor and author Tim Keller. Tim passed away in New York City at the age of 72. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020.

Over the years, Dr. Keller graciously appeared as a guest on this podcast, leaving us with nine rich APJ episodes on topics like vocation (or work) and on the themes of prayer and solitude. I’m thankful for the time he invested with us.

Cancer, for Dr. Keller, was an old nemesis. Back in 2002, he was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer, a battle he would fight between 2003 and 2004. God would heal and restore Keller, but not before thyroid surgery knocked him out of the pulpit for three months. A decade later, Keller preached a sermon on boldness in the face of death and recounted what he learned during that first cancer battle, opening up about his fears as he was rolled into the operating room. In that moment, he caught a glimpse of something otherworldly. He saw the sheer magnitude of God’s glory and God’s joy beyond this world of pain and suffering and cancer and death.

I want to play for you a sermon clip that comes to my mind on this day, celebrating his life, knowing he has passed into the presence of God and into God’s incredible, unspeakable joy that the rest of us are left longing for. Here’s Tim Keller, in 2013, answering this question: Where do we find courage for life’s scariest moments?

To me, my favorite version of this example of what real courage is comes out of this little passage near the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you’re one of the three or four people in the world who has never heard of The Lord of the Rings, it’s a story. There are these two little heroes. One is the master, and one is the servant of the master. Sam is the servant, and he loves his master. They’re on this terrible quest, and at one point, his master is imprisoned in a tower. Sam rescues Frodo, his master, largely by screwing himself up and saying, “You are not going to hurt him. I’m going to do this. You can’t stop me. I’m the great . . . here I come.” He does rescue him.

After that, they’re still on their terrible quest, and the danger is still very real. One night, Sam looks up into the sky and sees a star. This is in the book, not the movie. This is what the passage says:

Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart. . . . For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now . . . his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him . . . [and he fell] into a deep untroubled sleep. (922)

The author, Tolkien, is trying to say there’s a difference between defiance, in which you screw yourself up (“I can do it!”) — that’s still, in the end, not the courage you need, because you’re looking at yourself. Courage, on the one hand, is not looking at yourself and banishing fear. No, it’s just letting the fears play their role, and not letting the fears play too much of a role by looking away from yourself. “Okay,” you say, “but then to what?” It’s even in the text I just read. It was defiance, not hope. Hope.

When Paul met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, “‘Who are you, Lord?’ [I asked.] ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting’” (Acts 22:8 NIV) — the resurrected Jesus. When we were going through Acts 9, the first account of Paul’s conversion, we talked a little bit about this. When Paul realized that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, suddenly everything broke open. Suddenly the meaning of his death made sense, and the hope for the future made sense.

If Jesus Christ really died on the cross, taking our punishment, and he’s now raised from the dead, now when we believe in him, not only are our sins forgiven, but now we have an incredible hope about the future. We’re going to be raised, and everything in this world is going to be put right, and there is not going to be any suffering or death. That is an astonishing hope.

As I said, the first part of courage is looking away from yourself. The world tells you, “Look at yourself and banish fear.” The second part of courage is looking toward hope, getting a hope. Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy — so much joy that the fear plays its proper role. Well, how do you get that joy?

“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.”

Before we get to that, let me just tell you there is a second way out there in the world that people are counseling each other to get courage. I think the primary way is this sort of “self-esteemism.” The primary way the world tries to tell you to get courage is this: “Just tell yourself, ‘No fear — you can do it!’ Summon up the blood and go do it.”

I do think there’s an alternate discourse out there, and it’s older. It’s more ancient. It goes back to the East. It goes back to the Greeks. Cicero, for example, who was one of the Roman Stoics, wrote a very famous couple of treatises on why you shouldn’t be afraid of anything, especially not death. You shouldn’t be afraid of death. He says, “Courage makes light of death, for the dead are only as they were before they were born. It encounters pain by recollecting that the great pains are ended by death. Others we can usually control, if they are endurable, but if they are not, we can serenely quit life’s theater when the play has ceased to please us.”

What he’s saying here is, “There is no reason to be afraid of anything, including not of death. Why? Because when you die, that’s it. It’s like before. You’re just not there.” What is he saying? You shouldn’t be afraid of anything, because you tell yourself, “I’m going to lose it all anyway. There’s no use crying over spilled milk. When you die, that’s it. I’m enjoying things, but everybody loses things.”

What are they doing? You’re still deadening your heart, aren’t you? There is a way of getting courage, not by deadening your heart to fear, but by deadening your heart to love. And it’s not just Cicero — I’ve read it in the New Yorker. So many smart secular people today say the same thing. “There’s no reason to be afraid of things. There’s no reason to be afraid of death. When you’re dead, that’s it. There’s no reason to be afraid of death.” Oh no?

What is it that makes your life meaningful? Is it your health? Partly. Is it your wealth? Partly. Is it your success? Partly. But what if you had those things and you didn’t have love? What if you had nobody in your life to love you, nobody in your life for you to love? It would be meaningless. What makes your life meaningful are the people you love and the people who love you. That’s what makes your life meaningful.

Now you’re going to stand there, Cicero (or whoever), and you’re going to tell me I should not fear a future state in which the one thing that makes life meaningful is taken away? All love and all loved ones are taken away. That’s the state. And you’re telling me I shouldn’t be afraid of that? Are you crazy? Of course we should be afraid of that. I’m sorry, but deadening your heart to love is just like deadening your heart to fear. It kind of works, partly, but I don’t know. It’s certainly not good for your heart.

Here’s a better way. George Herbert, a seventeenth-century Anglican priest — incredible poet. One of my favorite poems in the history of the world is his little poem called “A Dialogue-Anthem.” It’s a dialogue between a Christian and Death. Christian starts.

Chr.Alas, poor Death! where is thy glory?Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting?

Dea.Alas, poor mortal, void of story!Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.

Chr.Poor Death! and who was hurt thereby?Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accursed.

Dea.Let losers talk: yet thou shalt die;These arms shall crush thee.

Chr.     Spare not, do thy worst.I shall be one day better than before;Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.

Do you want to be fearless? Do you want to look out there and say, “Nothing can really hurt me because of my infallible hope”? Do you want to look out there, saying, “Even the worst thing that can happen to me — death — can only make me better”? “Spare not, Death! Come on. All you could do is make me better than I am now.”

George Herbert has a great line where he says, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener.” All he can do is plant you, and you finally come up into the beautiful flower that you were meant to be. You’re just a seed, and death just plants you, and then you finally become who you were meant to be. That’s not courage the Ciceronian way. “Just kill your heart. Just say, ‘Well, we’re going to lose everything anyway.’ Just deaden it.” This isn’t Hercules. This isn’t King Arthur. This is Jesus.

“Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage.”

How can you be utterly, utterly sure you have that hope? How can you say to even death itself, “Spare not, do thy worst”? I can tell you how. You have to believe in the only God. There are a lot of religions out there, and they all claim “God, God, God,” but Christianity is the only religion that even claims our God has the attribute of courage. Why? Because when God became Jesus Christ, he became vulnerable. He became human. When he was in the garden of Gethsemane, when everybody was asleep and it was dark and there was nobody there and he realized what he was about to face.

I actually think the garden of Gethsemane is the place where you see the greatest act of courage in the history of the world, because by the time he got nailed to the cross, even if he wanted to turn around, it would have been too late. There he was, nailed to the cross. But that night, he could have left. In fact, he even thought about it. He says, “My soul is overwhelmed . . . to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38 NIV). What do you see in Jesus Christ? You see courage.

You don’t see him saying, “Bring it on.” The bloody sweat showed he was feeling fear. He wasn’t saying, “Come on.” What was he doing? We’re told all about it in Hebrews 12:1–3 (NIV):

Therefore . . . let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

There it is. He looked away from himself, and what did he look toward? Joy. What was the joy? The joy of pleasing his Father and redeeming his friends. The joy of that enabled him to have courage. Listen: if you see him courageously dying for you like that so you can say to death, “Spare not, do thy worst,” then you can have courage.

One of the few times I needed courage, God was very happy to give it to me, and it was very nice. When I was going under, being wheeled in for my only cancer surgery — I had thyroid cancer years ago — I do remember (it was so nice) I suddenly had this sense that the world is wonderful and the universe is this big ball of the glory of God, and we’re just trapped in this little tiny speck of darkness. And even that’s going to be taken away eventually. Therefore, no matter what happens now, whatever happens with the surgery, I’m going to be all right. My family is going to be all right. The world is going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right. It was very nice to have a moment of courage.

“By looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.”

I have to tell you, I haven’t had many of those moments. I can’t hold on to them. But guess what? The courageous Jesus Christ holds on to me and holds on to you. And if you look at him and the joy of what he accomplished through his courageous act — by looking at the joy of what is now there for you, you’ll face whatever you have to face.

“Real courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of joy.” A moving testimony of the sheer magnitude of God’s glory. A clip from Tim Keller’s sermon titled “The Gospel and Courage,” preached on May 26, 2013.

A couple of years later, Dr. Keller took this story and wrote it into his book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (2015). I want to read his published version.

There have not been many times in my life when I felt “the peace that passes understanding.” But there was one time for which I am very grateful. . . . It was just before my cancer surgery. My thyroid was about to be removed, and after that, I faced a treatment with radioactive iodine to destroy any residual cancerous thyroid tissue in my body. Of course my whole family and I were shaken by it all, and deeply anxious. On the morning of my surgery, after I said my good-byes to my wife and sons, I was wheeled into a room to be prepped. And in the moments before they gave me the anesthetic, I prayed. To my surprise, I got a sudden, clear new perspective on everything. It seemed to me that the universe was an enormous realm of joy, mirth, and high beauty. Of course it was — didn’t the triune God make it to be filled with his own boundless joy, wisdom, love, and delight? And within this great globe of glory was only one little speck of darkness — our world — where there was temporarily pain and suffering. But it was only one speck, and soon that speck would fade away and everything would be light. And I thought, “It doesn’t really matter how the surgery goes. Everything will be all right. Me — my wife, my children, my church — will all be all right.” I went to sleep with a bright peace on my heart. (318)

I trust that in his last days Tim was given this courage and this vision again of the magnitude of God’s joy enveloping everything else.

Dr. Keller escaped this speck of darkness for the high beauty forever beyond the Shadow’s reach and entered into the boundless joy of his master at the age of 72. Farewell for now, Dr. Keller.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast.

Well, God is happy in himself. Amen. And God wants us to be happy in himself. Amen. If you start applying biblical categories here, you begin to ask this question: How does God’s joy become my joy? That’s our question today — a really good one — from a listener named Heather in Chicago.

“Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast,” she writes. “My question for you is about the nature of who God is and how he relates to our joy. Can you explain to me, from the Bible, the person and work of the Holy Spirit as the love and joy shared between the Father and the Son? I don’t quite understand this without making his person seem more like a force or a cosmic energy. And then how does the person of the Spirit enable us to experience God’s joy within us? It seems like those two realities connect, the person of the Spirit and the joy in us. But it doesn’t connect for me. Not yet. Can you help me understand these two dynamics from the Bible?”

I think it’s crucial, as we try to understand our relationship with the Holy Spirit, that we fix it firmly in our minds that we are dealing with a distinct person. Just fix it, so that whatever else is uncertain, don’t let that be uncertain: a person, a divine person, the third person of the Trinity.

Fellowship of the Spirit

In fact, I’ve been struck recently — even before I heard this question — how the New Testament encourages us to enjoy fellowship with each of the three divine persons of the Trinity, not just fellowship with God in the abstract or general way, but fellowship with God the Father, fellowship with God the Son, fellowship with God the Spirit. For example, 1 Corinthians 1:9 says that God called us “into the fellowship of his Son.” Second Corinthians 13:14 refers to “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” First John 1:3 says, “Our fellowship is with the Father.” So, we’re taught to have fellowship — communion, personal relations — with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

You know what book I would recommend, Tony: John Owen, Communion with the Triune God. Nobody, I don’t think, in the history of the church has helped people come to terms with what it means to relate to each person of the Trinity like John Owen. I would recommend Communion with the Triune God by John Owen.

Now, that implies that the Holy Spirit is a person — someone you can relate to, talk to — which is exactly the way Jesus spoke of him. He says in John 14:26, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he” — and yes, it is masculine, not neuter (to agree with spirit, pneuma) — “he will teach you all things.” So, he is distinct from the Father, because the Father sends him, and he’s a teacher when he comes, not just a force or gas.

“The New Testament encourages us to enjoy fellowship with each of the three divine persons of the Trinity.”

The apostle Paul picks up on this very reality of the Spirit as distinct from the Father and a very personal teacher in 1 Corinthians 2:10, 13, where he says, “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” What an amazing statement. “The Spirit searches . . . the depths of God. . . . And we impart [things of God] in words . . . taught by the Spirit.” So, Paul is just like Jesus. Paul is picking it up and continuing what Jesus taught. Jesus and Paul treat the Holy Spirit not as an impersonal force or power, but as a person who comes and teaches and indwells believers and who can be related to personally.

Spirit of a Spirit?

Then consider that Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” In other words, God is not material. He’s not physical. He is spirit, which means that when we say that one of the persons of the Trinity is the Spirit of God, we are saying he is the Spirit of a spirit.

Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to say the spirit has a Spirit? We are not saying he’s the image of the spirit or the radiance of the spirit or the logos or word of the spirit, all of which are said about the Son. So, what are we saying when we refer to the Holy Spirit of God, who is himself as Trinity spirit?

Here’s what Jonathan Edwards — who has helped me so much — says: “The word ‘spirit’ in Scripture, when used concerning minds . . . is put for the disposition, inclination, or temper of the mind.” For example, when Ephesians 4:23 says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” it refers to the disposition or temper of your mind. Edwards goes on,

So, I suppose when we read of the Spirit of God, who we are told is a spirit, it is to be understood of the disposition, temper, or affection of the divine mind. . . . Now, the sum of God’s temper or disposition is love, for he is infinite love. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 21:122)

Now, when he says that, we must resist — as Heather pointed out — the temptation to think of love as a mere force or power rather than a person. Edwards is not denying the personhood of the Holy Spirit when he talks of him as the temper or the disposition or the love of God. Edwards is simply trying to put all the biblical pieces together.

Eternal Love of God

The New Testament doesn’t just come out and tell us in a doctrinal statement, “The Holy Spirit is a person,” or, “The person is the very embodiment of the love of God.” It doesn’t say that. The various statements of the New Testament point in this direction. But you have to put the pieces together, which means we need to be careful — oh, how careful — lest we go off the rails and become heretics. I think all of our human efforts — I’d say this in general now about Edwards, myself, or anybody else — to conceptualize the relationships within the Trinity need to confess that we see through a glass darkly until we know even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12), which means, “Be careful.”

“The Spirit, in his essence, is God’s joyful love, loving joy in person.”

Now, here’s another pointer to the question that Heather’s concerned about. First John 4:12–13 points to the Holy Spirit as the love of God in us. Here’s what it says: “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” So, if you put all that together, God in us, his love in us, his Spirit in us, all seem to point to the fact that the way the love of God abides in us is by his Spirit. That is his disposition, his temper. That is his love in person, abiding in us by the person of the Holy Spirit.

Eternal Joy of God

Now, the piece that remains to be added for Heather’s question is joy. This is added by pondering that the love that God is from all eternity is not a sacrificial love between the Father and the Son. They are infinitely beautiful, infinitely worthy of each other’s love, which means that they delight in each other infinitely. That’s what their love is.

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am [totally delighted]” — that’s my paraphrase of “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). To say that the love of the Father and the Son for each other is embodied in the Spirit is to say that the Spirit, in his essence, is God’s joyful love, loving joy in person, because God’s loving from eternity has been his enjoying from eternity. That’s how the persons of the Godhead have related to each other. They’re not disappointed; they don’t have to overcome any obstacles to delight in each other.

So, when Jesus says, “My joy I give to you” (see John 15:11), or when he says, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21), he is welcoming us into the fullest experience of the Son’s love for the Father. It seems right, then, to say this is experienced by being filled with the Holy Spirit, who is the very person who is the love of God and the joy of God. Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians 1:6 of “the joy of the Holy Spirit,” the joy that the Holy Spirit gives by coming himself to live in us as the very love and joy of God.

I pray that God would help you, Heather, and all of us, as we humbly and carefully try to faithfully put the pieces of God’s precious word together.

When I began my doctoral studies on the Puritans, I received all sorts of odd, and sometimes troubling, questions about my research. One of the most surprising came from a stranger who, upon learning the focus of my PhD, asked, “Do we have any stories of children raised by Puritans who grew up and left the faith because of how their parents mistreated them?” The question came out of nowhere; I could hardly think of what to say. In my shock, I blurted out that I was not aware of any stories like this.

Later that night, I realized why the question shocked me. Not only had I never heard such a story, but I had heard many stories that showed the opposite — stories of young men raised by Puritan fathers who then became Puritans themselves, such as Matthew Henry, son of Puritan clergyman Philip Henry. Soon, I would also discover that the Puritans explicitly spoke against abuse in the home, instructing parents instead to care for and pass down the faith to their families.

In fact, the Puritans are often remembered for their devotion to family life. What we don’t often hear about, however, are the Puritan women — the faithful mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and daughters who bore much of the load. When I started studying Puritan women, their stories excited me: a daughter evangelizing her unbelieving father, an aunt catechizing her nieces and guiding them through life’s challenges, a grandmother raising her granddaughter after a family tragedy. These are just some of the amazing testimonies that have been preserved for us from church history.

But to me, the most fascinating story of a Puritan woman passing down the faith comes from the life of Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681). A mother of eight who wrote works of poetry, history, and theology, Hutchinson crafted the only known theological treatise written by a woman in the seventeenth century. Its purpose? To pass down the faith to her daughter Barbara, who would soon move away to start life as an independent adult.

When Love and Duty Meet

The fact that Hutchinson wrote an entire book of theology becomes less surprising when we consider her upbringing: she hated sewing and playing with friends her age, loved reading and listening to the adults of the house, attended sermons with her mother, outperformed her brother in Latin, and eventually married a man who had similar intellectual interests.

But still, why would Hutchinson go to the trouble of writing an entire book for her daughter? In a letter to Barbara that she attached to the treatise, Hutchinson explained herself. Though she could have simply bought Barbara an affordable short catechism written by professionally trained theologians (such as the theologians who influenced her own writings), she believed it was her duty as a mother to do all she could to stabilize her daughter’s faith — and she could not shirk this duty.

True, Barbara might think it over-the-top. What’s more, Hutchinson was weighed down by great personal challenges during her writing process: illness, distraction, a lack of external support and self-confidence, and the aftermath of her husband’s death (which left her with a broken heart, debts to pay off, and children to care for alone). But she felt that she had to proceed, no matter how slow and painful the process might be. Overall, what motivated Hutchinson, in addition to her motherly love and sense of duty, was her own commitment to God and his people.

Faith-Filled Mothers Faithfully Teach

As Hutchinson’s treatise shows, she was convinced from Scripture that the purpose of life was to love God, which led, in turn, to loving his people. So, she taught Barbara that we fulfill the most important commandment or “the law” through “love” (Mark 12:29–30; Romans 13:10) and that God calls us to “stir up one another to love” (Hebrews 10:24) and abide “in the light” (1 John 2:10) through love.

In light of these passages, she urged Barbara to partake of the faith and love of the universal church by joining a local church to worship God with fellow believers, serve one another, and care for the needy. In fact, her book is one big explanation of faith in God, his work in creation, salvation, and sanctification, and how we live in relationship with him and humanity.

Unfortunately, we don’t know what became of Barbara after Hutchinson sent her off with this special book; the only record we have is of the financial hardships Barbara’s daughters faced later in life. But we do know that despite whatever trials Barbara and her family faced, they had access to the most important truths through the teaching Lucy had passed down to them.

Passing Down the Faith Today

After learning about Hutchinson’s intellectual prowess and great ambitions, we may be tempted to think of her example as too great to emulate. But despite her unique talents, Hutchinson’s story has many lessons for us today as we seek to raise our children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews in the Lord Jesus.

1. Teach yourself first.

First, Hutchinson grounded herself in the truths of Scripture before and as she taught her daughter. When she instructed Barbara, she did not speak as a nameless, faceless narrator — she spoke as a Christian who had spent her life studying theology, gathering with the church, and reflecting on her own faith journey.

Her commitment to personal discipleship teaches us that if we want to do any spiritual good to the dependents and disciples in our lives, we first need to receive that spiritual good for ourselves. As Paul says, “You . . . who teach others, do you not teach yourself?” (Romans 2:21). If we don’t want to be like the Pharisees, we need to believe and experience what we are teaching to others. We don’t need to be perfect in our faith or good works, but we do need to spend time reminding (even teaching!) ourselves what we believe and why, and then share our personal experiences of these truths with others in order to offer genuine and effective instruction.

2. Draw from the best resources.

For all her theological aptitude, Hutchinson was not a professional theologian. She did not even go to university because of the laws and societal norms of her day. Even still, Hutchinson was able to become skilled in theology because she supplemented her personal Bible reading with some of the best theological resources available to her, including the writings of John Calvin, John Owen, and the Westminster divines.

Like Hutchinson, all of us can become good disciplers if we have the right tools — we do not need to be officially trained or paid. If we want to fulfill the Great Commission to “make disciples” and teach “them to observe all that [Jesus has] commanded” (Matthew 28:19–20), all we need to do is use the abilities God has given us (Romans 12:6) alongside the wisdom God has given to others.

3. Let suffering strengthen resolve.

Finally, Hutchinson persevered through many struggles in order to teach Barbara. Perhaps we picture great thinkers from history cozied up on the couch, tea in hand and dog on lap, writing their magnum opus. The reality, however, is that many of these thinkers, including Hutchinson, wrote in the midst of waking nightmares. Yet such trials did not stop them from passing down the faith. In fact, in many cases, suffering had the opposite effect, creating the right emotional environment to spur them on to communicate the truth with intensity and clarity.

After losing so much, Hutchinson must have felt even more keenly her duty to fortify Barbara’s faith. Suffering did not make her hopeless; rather, it created endurance and character as she passed on the faith for her family’s future (Romans 5:3–4).

Right now may feel like the wrong time to devote yourself to teaching. Maybe your children are small, and you can hardly get through the day. Maybe a family member is ill. Maybe someone in your family has lost a job or you are in the middle of an international move. While there are times to work and times to rest, it is important that passing on the faith within our families does not get put on a permanent back burner.

Reminding ourselves of the greatness of Christian love and the example of Hutchinson’s motherly love can spur us to pass on the faith even when we feel weighed down by life or unqualified for the task. Whatever our circumstances or qualifications, God can use us to strengthen the faith of others, especially as we ask him to strengthen our own.