http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15086535/how-is-christ-head-of-the-church

Several weeks ago, I bore witness to a miracle. It was the kind of miracle I had often prayed for — and the kind I had come not to expect. And then, in an ordinary moment of an ordinary day, it happened.

A man I have long known and loved, a man I have poured into and prayed for, a man I have sometimes despaired of and sinned against, changed. He really changed. The Spirit of God moved upon the waters of his soul, shining light into an old and stubborn darkness, and I bore witness to a startling, miraculous act of obedience. It was a moment worthy of angels’ admiration.

As I reflect on the miracle now, and the years leading up to it, I find myself wishing I could take back many impatient responses along the way: cynical thoughts, reproofs spoken in fleshly frustration, unbelieving prayers on his behalf, unrighteous inner anger. But even more, I find myself marveling at the patience of God unashamed to call this man — and me — his own.

So often, I labor for others’ growth on a timeline dramatically shorter than God’s. Whereas I tend to track others’ progress in terms of days and weeks, “the living God,” says David Powlison, “seems content to work . . . on a scale of years and decades, throughout a whole lifetime” (Making All Things New, 61). And oh, how I want to be like him — zealously yearning for change, faithfully praying for change, and then patiently waiting for change.

For miracles are wondrous things. But many miracles take time and remarkable patience.

Disciples of Perfect Patience

The apostle Paul knew something of such patience. His own testimony bore the marks of God’s long-suffering love, his “perfect patience” (1 Timothy 1:16). And Paul remembered that patience. He couldn’t forget it.

In response, he lived and ministered with a profound patience of his own. What else could have kept Paul loving churches that sometimes broke his apostolic heart — churches like Corinth or Galatia? Though slandered (2 Corinthians 10:1–2), though underappreciated (Galatians 4:15–16), though repeatedly faced with startling folly and sin (1 Corinthians 3:1–4), Paul remained patient, a disciple of God’s perfect patience. He yearned, he prayed, he labored, he pleaded, but he also waited “with utmost patience” (2 Corinthians 12:12). He let miracles take their God-appointed time.

And so he instructed others. “Reprove, rebuke, and exhort,” O Timothy — yet do so “with complete patience” (2 Timothy 4:2). “Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak,” dear Thessalonians — yet “be patient with them all” (1 Thessalonians 5:14). Patience, for Paul, was not merely one way of responding among many: it was a robe to clothe all responses.

“Miracles are wondrous things. But many miracles take time and remarkable patience.”

Where might such “complete patience” come from? Where might we find the strength to be patient not just with the outwardly hopeful, or with those whose struggles we understand, but “with them all”? Patience like Paul’s comes in part (as we’ve seen) from the backward glance, from the story of God’s patience with us. But Paul also gives us more. For so often, as he responds to sin and folly with patience, his eyes are looking ahead.

Imagine Them Then

Consider the Christian who causes you the most grief: a brother or sister in your small group, a parent or sibling, your own believing child. What do you see when you look at this person, especially in his worst moments? A stubborn young man, perhaps, who can’t seem to take counsel seriously. Or maybe a flaky woman whose “yes” is actually “we’ll see” and often “no.” A headache or a heartache. An inconvenience or an interruption. A waste of time.

Those assessments are understandable, at least to a man like me. But what did Paul see? He saw, no doubt, a troubled soul, just as we do. But whereas we often see only what is, Paul had an astounding ability to see what could be — and in Christ, what will be. We see a house unfinished; Paul saw an unfinished house. He saw stumbling saints in light of who they one day would become:

I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

The picture frame I place around people is often no more than a cramped little square: I imprison them in the present moment, neglecting to see where they came from or where they’re going. But what a broad frame the apostle used! Broad enough to see the darkness and death from which others came (“he who began a good work in you . . .”) — and broad enough to see the light and life to which they are headed (“. . . will bring it to completion”).

Paul could still see the present moment, of course. And his patience did not prevent him from rebuking and reproving, nor from earnestly warning when needed. But when he looked upon someone in Christ — repenting, believing, yet often stumbling — today was not as important to him as “the day of Jesus Christ,” when this unimpressive saint would shine like the sun in the kingdom of God (Matthew 13:43).

And so, he could look upon today’s stumbling and see tomorrow’s standing. He could trace a line between today’s discouraging failure and tomorrow’s final victory. He could imagine the angry turned calm, the lustful made pure, the grumbling quietly content, and the bitter full of forgiveness — not because people themselves are so full of promise, but because our faithful God finishes whatever he begins.

Name Them Now

Ah, yes, I find myself thinking. Paul wrote those words to the Philippians, a maturing church. Would he say the same to the struggling? Indeed he would; indeed he did. He begins his letter to the Corinthians in much the same way (1 Corinthians 1:8–9). And as he does, he reveals another dimension of godly patience: the patient not only imagine other Christians then; they also draw that future reality down into the present moment and name these Christians now. They see, in Christ, that the sun of another’s life is rising, not setting, and then they define this person by the coming day, not the lingering night.

And so Paul, though discouraged and disappointed by the Corinthians’ slow progress, begins his letter with their true name: “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2). O Corinthians, you might act sometimes like sinners and fools, but that’s not who you are. In Christ, your name is saint.

We find this patient naming elsewhere as well, perhaps especially in Peter’s life. When he saw himself as merely “a sinful man,” worthy to be forsaken by Jesus, our patient Lord named him a fisher of men (Luke 5:8–10). Later, when Peter surely felt like little more than a lost and desperate sheep, our patient Lord named him a shepherd (John 21:15–17).

Every failed Peter needs someone to believe that failure need not define him. Every stumbling Corinthian needs someone to see his sin and still call him saint. Every discouraged Christian needs someone to lift his eyes to the coming day, when all the soul’s shadows will flee before the face of our patient and purifying Christ.

Of course, we don’t want to give anyone a name that God himself doesn’t give. But if Jesus could see a shepherd in Peter, and if Paul could see saints in the Corinthians, then surely we can name others more hopefully than we sometimes do. And what a difference such a name might make. When we feel utterly lost in some forest of failure, a faithful name can be like a path that suddenly appears and a light to guide our way. I don’t need to stay here, such a name suggests. In Jesus, I can be more than I am right now.

Room for Good to Grow

Several times in Paul’s letters, the grace of patience holds hands with another Spirit-given virtue: kindness. “Love is patient and kind,” he tells the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13:4). He writes also of “the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience” (Romans 2:4). In the garden of the Holy Spirit, the two grow side by side: “patience, kindness” (Galatians 5:22).

“Every failed Peter needs someone to believe that failure need not define him.”

Such a pairing suggests that the truly patient do not merely hold their tongue or restrain their burning frustration behind a forced smile. No, their patience is the product of a deeper passion, godly and pure: a love of kindness, the very kindness that leads to repentance (Romans 2:4). As God has been patiently kind with us — as God is, right now, patiently kind with us — so we love to be patiently kind with others.

Imagine, then, patience like the walls of a garden, protecting the fragile shoots of grace in another’s soul. Whereas impatience lets wind destroy and animals trample and chew, patience gives room for good things to grow. It gives room for kindness to shine like the sun and fall like rain, for the work that God began to grow toward completion.

You and I, dear Christian, are a garden within God’s walls. Whatever grace we have is a miracle wrought by his patience and nourished by his kindness. And the same miracles still happen today. We may see more of them if we pray, and imagine, and name, and wait, and robe our every word with some of the patience we have received from him.

Audio Transcript

There are certain Bible texts that are so important to Pastor John’s life and ministry that we need to stop and focus on them. We saw one last time, on the “gutsy guilt” of Micah 7:8–9, looking at what we do when we come face to face with the guilt of our darkest sin. And today we look at another important text, Isaiah 43:6–7. It’s essential to know and study and maybe memorize. It’s so rich, which is why it comes up all the time on this podcast, which you’ll see in the APJ book on pages 87–88.

Isaiah 43:6–7 is on my mind today because we read it today. We read Isaiah 42 and 43 together in our reading plan, alongside three other texts. It’s a lot of reading today. And again, Pastor John, one of my fears with a reading plan like this one, trying to read the whole Bible in one year, is that it just makes it so easy to breeze past important texts, especially ones you draw from all the time. So, I want to hit pause and have you slow us down to meditate on Isaiah 43:6–7 for ten minutes or so to draw out the points we need on this text. It seems like a huge and awesome blessing that the Creator would explain to us why we exist.

It is huge. One of the reasons these verses from Isaiah 43 have been so central to my thinking is that 55 years ago, when I was in seminary, I bought a book by the seminary faculty titled Things Most Surely Believed. In that book, Daniel Fuller, one of the faculty, my most influential teacher, had a chapter titled “Why God Created the World.” And that chapter was an exposition of these verses.

I was drawn into a living discussion of that text and what seemed to me to be just about the most important question in the world. Why do I exist? Why does anything exist? And I’ve never tired of returning to these verses, because when I read them in context over and over, I not only see fresh glimpses of God’s peculiar design for me as a human being, but I also feel welling up in my heart fresh zeal to bring my life into alignment with God’s ultimate purpose and so experience the greatest significance possible in this life and not waste my one single life that I have to live on this earth. And that just has been huge for me. I mean, over and over again, it has kindled in me, “Don’t waste your life. There’s a purpose for your life. God has revealed it. Get in line with it. This will make everything count.” And that’s what I would love for our listeners in this session.

So, hear the words that I’ve returned to over and over — this is Isaiah 43:6–7: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Let’s gaze at the wonder of this statement through five different lenses.

1. God’s Purpose for All Peoples

Let’s look at it through the Jewish lens. This is a statement made to Israel. We just have to own that right off. We’re Gentiles reading it, and we take it for ourselves (as we should), but you have to give that a little bit of thought. This is made to Israel. The paragraph — verse 1 — begins, “Now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel.” There are unique ways by which God is glorified in the history of Israel. No doubt about that. And he’s talking about that here.

But it would be a mistake not to see ourselves — as Christians, lovers of Messiah Jesus — in this verse and not to see his purpose for the nations as well in this verse. Because the Bible teaches that not just Israel but all the nations, indeed all humans created in God’s image — to image forth God; that is, to glorify God by virtue of being created in his image — all of us exist for the glory of God. “Every tongue,” Paul says in Philippians 2:11, willingly or unwillingly, will “confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Not just confess Christ, but confess Christ “to the glory of God the Father.”

“People should put their eyes to the lens of our life and see through it the greatness of the glory of God.”

As far as Christians are concerned, the whole New Testament is designed to show that Gentile believers, like me and you, Tony, and most of the people listening, probably — Gentile believers in Jesus — are now included in God’s chosen people, the true Israel. So, if you are in Christ, in the Jewish Messiah, by faith, “you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29). Therefore, the fullness of God’s blessing in Isaiah 43 applies not only to Jewish believers but also to Gentile believers. So, we should read this chapter and revel in it as ours — Gentiles, believers in Messiah.

2. God’s Self-Exaltation

Let’s look at it through the lens of God’s self-exaltation. Isaiah 43:7 says, “I created [my sons and daughters] for my glory” — whom I created “for my glory.” This is just inescapably and plainly an instance of God’s self-exaltation. He’s saying, in effect, “The universe is about me, folks. It’s about me. The bigness of the universe is about my bigness. The workings of the universe in their amazing, intricate wisdom are about my wisdom. The weight and greatness of the universe are about my power. The gift of the universe to the human race is about my grace.” God’s purpose in creation is self-exalting. It’s about him. “From him and through him,” Paul said, “are all things” (Romans 11:36). So, that’s the second lens, and we’ll circle back to that to show why that’s good news.

3. God’s Eternal Glory

To say that God created the world and us for his glory does not mean he created us in order to become glorious — that’s really important to clarify — but rather to show, display, communicate, share his glory. God’s sons and daughters do not magnify him like a microscope, which makes small things look bigger than they are, but like a telescope, which makes unimaginably great things look more like what they are. He created us to glorify him like a telescope. People should put their eyes to the lens of our life and see through it the greatness of the glory of God — how satisfying he is to us.

4. God’s Self-Sufficiency

Therefore, we are able to see God in this text through the lens of his self-sufficiency. He did not create out of need. He wasn’t desperate for a friend. If you heard that growing up, like God made you because he needed a friend — not true. He was free and not constrained by any defect or any deficiency. “It is no defect in a fountain,” Edwards said, “that it is prone to overflow” (see God’s Passion for His Glory, 165). God did not create out of the deficiency of need; he created out of the fullness of love.

5. Our Everlasting Joy

This brings us to the most wonderful part of this text that I hadn’t meditated on for a long time. And it really jumped out at me in a most wonderful way in getting ready for this — namely, looking at it through the lens of our own experience of God’s purpose to glorify God in us. If God created us for his glory, what does that imply about our experience of God’s glory? Now, here are the key words from verses 1–5, and if you read them slowly and you count them, they are simply glorious, amazing, wonderful, encouraging. Here they are:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;     I have called you by name, you are mine.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;     and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,     and the flame shall not consume you.For I am the Lord your God,     the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. . . .Because you are precious in my eyes,     and [glorified], and I love you. . . .Fear not, for I am with you.

To have the Creator of the universe talk to you that way — what could be more glorious? “Loved,” “redeemed,” “called,” “owned,” “protected,” “precious,” “glorified.” God has said everything he can say, has he not? He said everything he can say to make it plain that his own self-exaltation is good for me, is good for us.

We fulfill the destiny of the universe — we fulfill God’s purpose to be glorified in us — when we revel in being loved by him, revel in being redeemed by him, revel in being called by him, revel in being owned by him, revel in being protected by him, revel in being precious to him, revel in being glorified, actually sharing in the glory that he created the world to display. God created us for his glory, and this is spectacularly good news because, as is so plain in this text, God is glorified in us when we are satisfied in him. That’s why he made the world.