ABSTRACT: The majority of surviving Greek manuscripts include Mark 16:9–20 at the end of the Gospel, and the majority of Christians throughout church history have received these verses as God’s word. Nevertheless, both external and internal evidence suggest that Mark likely ended his Gospel at verse 8, however abrupt the conclusion may seem. Externally, the earliest Greek manuscripts omit the longer ending, and a key early witness weighs against it. Internally, the shorter ending offers the more difficult conclusion and, therefore, the more likely reading. Either way, nothing in the longer ending contradicts the other Gospels, and Christians may still read the material as helpful commentary, even if not as inspired Scripture.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Peter Orr, lecturer in New Testament at Moore College, to present evidence for the original ending of Mark’s Gospel.

In July of 2015, 60-year-old John David Brock was attending a service of Mossy Simpson Pentecostal Church in Jenson, Kentucky. That morning, during the service, Brock handled a rattlesnake that subsequently bit him. He refused medical treatment and later died from the snake’s poison. Brock is not the only person to have died in these circumstances. Jamie Coots, a pastor and reality-TV star, died a year earlier after he was bitten by a snake he was handling in a service.

This practice comes from a particular interpretation of Mark 16:18, where Jesus promises that those who believe in him “will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them.” Snake-handling (found mainly in Pentecostal churches in the Appalachian region of the United States) is obviously a very unusual application of Mark 16:18. Most people who read this verse understand it as metaphorical, or to apply to situations where God miraculously protects someone who is accidentally bitten by a snake, as he does Paul in Acts 28:3–5.

These tragic stories are a graphic way of introducing the debate over the ending of Mark’s Gospel. Nearly every English Bible currently sections off Mark 16:9–20 in square brackets, with a note like the one we find in the ESV: “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9–20.” What should we do with this passage? Should we view it as God’s word and read and preach it as the end of Mark’s Gospel? Or should we view it as a later addition — presumably to provide a conclusion to the Gospel’s seemingly abrupt end — and so not regard it as the word of God?

Longer Ending of Mark’s Gospel

The longer ending of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:9–20) recounts Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, who reports this appearance to the other disciples, who in turn do not believe her (verses 9–11). Jesus then appears to two disciples “as they were walking into the country” (like the disciples in Luke 24:13 on the road to Emmaus); these disciples tell the others who, again, fail to believe (verses 12–13). Then Jesus finally appears to the eleven and rebukes them for “their unbelief and hardness of heart” (verse 14). He then commissions them to go “into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (verse 15), with the promise that those who believe and are baptized will be saved, while those who refuse to believe will be condemned (verse 16). Signs will accompany those who proclaim the gospel, including exorcisms, speaking in tongues, snake-handling, drinking poison, and healing the sick (verses 17–18).

The final verses of the longer ending describe Jesus ascending into heaven and sitting at God’s right hand (verses 19), followed by the apostles, in obedience to his command, going out and preaching everywhere, “while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs” (verse 20).

There is nothing especially unusual about this longer ending. A few emphases are unique, such as the statement that “whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (verse 16), the promise of tongues-speaking for those who believe (verse 17), and of course the “snake handling” (verse 18). However, all of these emphases can be explained in a way that shows their consistency with the rest of the New Testament.1 We need to recognize, then, that although this is an important question, it is not a critical one. There is no major doctrine that turns on how we view the ending of Mark’s Gospel.

“There is no major doctrine that turns on how we view the ending of Mark’s Gospel.”

The evidence for the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel is actually quite compelling. Among surviving Greek manuscripts, only two stop at 16:8.2 So, if we were simply to count manuscripts, the evidence in favor of the longer ending would be overwhelming. It also seems that the majority of Christians throughout history were happy to retain the longer ending in their copies of Mark’s Gospel. We may think the simplest and best approach, then, would be to regard 16:9–20 as the genuine ending of Mark’s Gospel.

At the same time, the evidence for the shorter ending is quite compelling as well.

Earliest Manuscripts

One of the main reasons this is not an open-and-shut case is that two of the earliest and, it is argued, best manuscripts testify to the shorter ending. The codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus date to the fourth century and in fact are the earliest complete extant manuscripts of the New Testament. Further, when we compare these two manuscripts, we notice that they have a considerable number of (mostly) minor differences between them. In the process of transmission, it would have taken time for this number of differences to develop. That is, two people copying a manuscript at the same time would likely have some differences, but not this many. Thus, it is very likely that their common ancestor “must be several generations back.”3 And because both these significant manuscripts attest to the shorter ending of Mark, the evidence points to a much earlier manuscript that ended at 16:8. Thus, most likely, the earliest Greek evidence points to the shorter ending of Mark.

“The earliest Greek evidence points to the shorter ending of Mark.”

However, Vaticanus potentially throws up a piece of counterevidence. The end of Mark’s Gospel is unique in the New Testament in Vaticanus.4 On the final page, the second of three columns ends with 16:8, with a small gap at the end of that column. The third column, where we would expect Luke’s Gospel to begin, is blank, and Luke begins on the next page. This is the only place where this occurs in the New Testament section of Vaticanus. For example, the end of Matthew’s Gospel occurs near the top of column two, and the rest of that column is left blank. However, the third column is not left blank — it contains the beginning of Mark’s Gospel. Why the extra space, then, at the end of Mark’s Gospel? It may indicate an awareness of the longer ending. Of course, the evidence could go the other way as well: the scribe may have been aware of the longer ending but chose not to include it, effectively communicating something similar to our modern Bibles.5

Another important piece of evidence is found when we examine the different early translations of the Gospel of Mark (into Latin, Syriac, and more). In each case, the earliest manuscript omits the longer ending and ends at 16:8.6 Thus, the trajectory in each language is to add the longer ending, suggesting that it was not original.

Eusebius’s Judgment

How did early Christian writers view the end of Mark’s Gospel? This is a difficult question to answer because we don’t have many records of early sermons or commentaries on Mark. We can say very little when we look at second-century writers. Origen does not mention the long ending of Mark, but he does not appeal to Mark much at all. Clement of Alexandria similarly does not refer to the long ending, but neither does he mention, for example, the last chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.7 So, the evidence from the second century is ambiguous — there is just not enough written engagement with Mark’s Gospel to make a case one way or another.

By the time we reach the fourth century and Eusebius, however, there is more evidence in favor of Mark ending at 16:8. In his letter to one Marinus, Eusebius deals with the question of a seeming contradiction between Matthew and Mark regarding the timing of the resurrection, with Mark 16:9 indicating that Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, and Matthew 28:1 suggesting he rose late on the Sabbath. The details of this particular question don’t need to concern us,8 but in the discussion, Eusebius offers as one potential solution that Mark ended at verse 8, which would remove the contradiction:

The actual nub of the matter is the pericope which says this. One who athetises [i.e., marks the passage as not original] that pericope would say that it is not found in all copies of the gospel according to Mark: accurate copies end their text of the Marcan account with the words of the young man whom the women saw, and who said to them: “Do not be afraid; it is Jesus the Nazarene that you are looking for, etc. . . .” after which it adds: “And when they heard this, they ran away, and said nothing to anyone, because they were frightened.” That is where the text does end, in almost all copies of the gospel according to Mark. What occasionally follows in some copies, not all, would be extraneous, most particularly if it contained something contradictory to the evidence of the other evangelists.

That, then, would be one person’s answer: to reject it, entirely obviating the question as superfluous.9

Eusebius’s statement that “almost all copies” end at 16:8 is a significant early witness. However, we do need to acknowledge that he goes on to discuss how you could in fact resolve Mark 16:9 with Matthew 28:1, which suggests that he was at least open to the possibility that Mark 16:9–20 was original. Another piece of evidence comes from Eusebius’s system of noting parallels between the Gospels — known as his “canon tables.” So, canon 1 indicates where all four Gospels agree, canon 2 where Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree, and so on. Significantly, he does not include Mark 16:9–20 in his canon tables. These two pieces of evidence, on balance, suggest (though not definitively so) that Eusebius did not view these verses as original.

Internal Evidence

Along with external evidence (what the manuscripts say), we need to consider internal evidence. One of the principles of text criticism is that the reading that best explains the other reading is to be preferred. A related principle is that difficult readings are preferred (although not absurd readings, which are more likely to simply be errors). For example, in Mark 10, a man asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replies, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:17–18). In the parallel text in Matthew 19, Jesus’s reply is slightly different: “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good” (Matthew 19:17). Jesus’s statement in Matthew still implies that the one who is good is God, but his words are less specific than they are in Mark.

In the KJV, however, Matthew 19:17 says, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.” Here, Matthew and Mark agree much more closely. This is not a difference in English translation; the difference is because the KJV is working with different underlying manuscripts, which have Matthew 19:17 agreeing with Mark 10:18.

If we leave aside the quality of the different manuscripts, considering the internal evidence involves assessing which is the harder reading and which reading is more likely to have led to the other one. In short, it is more likely that a scribe copying Matthew 19 would have changed it to conform more closely to the parallel text in Mark 10. The non-KJV reading is the harder reading because, in it, Matthew 19:17 and Mark 10:18 record Jesus saying (slightly) different things. As such, it is easier to explain why a scribe would have changed this harder reading so that both texts explicitly say the same thing. The change might have been deliberate, with the scribe perhaps thinking that the text had been corrupted and so needed correction. Alternatively, the change might have happened unintentionally, almost on autopilot, because the scribe knew the Mark text so well. Either way, it is much easier to explain why a hard reading would have been changed to an easier reading than why an easier reading would have been changed to a hard reading.

How do these principles apply to Mark’s Gospel? Well, the harder reading is the shorter reading that ends at 16:8. In verse 7, the angel commissions the women at the tomb to go and announce to the disciples and Peter that Jesus is going before them to Galilee, where they will encounter him. The next verse, however, describes the women fleeing “from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (verse 8). It is, to say the least, a rather abrupt ending! There is no resurrection appearance by Jesus. We don’t read of the women obeying the command to go and tell the disciples. Rather, they are marked by fear and, at least on the surface, disobedience. So, when we compare these two endings, we can easily see which is the harder reading: the short, sudden ending of 16:8. It is easy to understand why a scribe would think that Mark could not have ended at that point. The short ending is harder and so, from that point of view, more likely.

Further, if we look at the content and style of the longer ending, it seems quite different in character from the rest of the Gospel (although there is a degree of subjectivity in this kind of judgment). There are stylistic differences (e.g., words like apisteō and blaptō, which are not used elsewhere in Mark).10 Further, the connection between verses 8 and 9 is clunky: verse 9 switches from the women to Jesus without specifically identifying him, but just saying he.

However, we also need to ask where the longer ending came from. Unlike our example of Mark 10 and Matthew 19, if this was a change, it could not have been an unintentional slip, perhaps caused by a familiarity with another text. No, for whatever reason, the longer ending (if not original, as I have argued) was added at a later date. Some have even suggested that the longer ending was another piece of writing Mark produced for a different reason, which he or his followers later appended to his Gospel.

End of the Beginning

If we take 16:8 as the ending, the book seems to finish in an anticlimactic way, with the women fleeing from the empty tomb in amazement and not saying anything to anyone, “for they were afraid” (16:8).11 However, the identity of this volume as “the beginning of the Gospel” (1:1) fits with the abruptness of the ending. Mark writes in a context where the Gospel is already known, where people have communicated the gospel, unlike the women who fled because of fear. He also writes with an implied encouragement that his readers will continue to be involved in the proclamation of the gospel. The abrupt ending reflects the fact that “Mark’s Gospel is just the beginning of the good news, because Jesus’s story has become ours, and we take it up where Mark leaves off.”12

What, then, are we to make of the longer ending? How we think about this passage is not necessarily black and white; if not original, we need not ignore it and set it aside as useless. This passage may still be historical; it may actually be a true account of what happened after the resurrection (it does not contradict anything in the other Gospels). As such, we can read it fruitfully to understand more of the context of the New Testament. Perhaps we might treat it as a combination of a helpful Christian book and a first-century historical source (like Josephus). Nevertheless, if we regard this passage as not original, then it is not part of God’s word, and it would not be appropriate to read it or preach on it in a church service the same way that we would Scripture.

Jason Helopoulos: I’m told that about 50 percent of those that are here are either somewhere between zero and five years of pastoral ministry. You’ve both pastored for a long time, so maybe we could start here. Could you tell us your sense of calling to ministry and how it was that the Lord called you to the pastorate?

John Piper: Let me give you the stages because it happened in stages. Stage one was the summer of 1966. I was gloriously confident in God that I should be a medical doctor because he had made it plain to me in April of that year that’s what I should do, which is a great lesson in not overstating your subjective sense of God’s leading. Confident as I was, I went to summer school to catch up on chemistry because I was behind as a literature major. God smacked me down in the hospital at the end of that summer with mononucleosis for three weeks and I had to drop organic chemistry. Harold John Ockenga was speaking in the chapel and I was listening on the radio and everything in me — another wonderful subjective reality — said, “I would love to handle the Bible like that.”

I had fallen in love with Noël about four weeks earlier and we were crazy in love and talking about marriage already. She came to visit me and I said, “I know you fell in love with a pre-med student, but that ain’t going to happen. I really do sense God leading me.” So, that was stage one, a call to the word. If you had said at that moment I would be a pastor, I would have said, “Never.” I couldn’t speak in front of a group. I had no intention or desire to be a pastor, but I loved the Bible and I wanted to know it and maybe teach it.

I went to seminary and taught for six years. Now it’s October 1979. That was 1966. At this point, I’ve never been a pastor. I’ve preached maybe ten sermons in my life, never buried anybody, never married anybody, and never visited anybody in the hospital, not as a pastor anyway. At about midnight there was another subjective experience. It was like Pascal said: fire. I could not resist the desire to preach. I was writing a book on Romans 9, which is one of the weightiest passages on the might and sovereignty of God in his freedom. Everything in me was saying — and I think it was God — “I will not just be analyzed. I will not just be explained. I will be heralded.”

So, I waited for my wife to wake up the next morning and dropped another bomb on her and said, “What would you think if I were to resign from my six-year teaching career at Bethel College and look for a church?” And she said, “I could see that coming.” Because she had heard me make so many comments about sermons either being wonderful or terrible. So, I went to the denominational official and said, “I believe God is calling me to the pastorate. Would you help me find a church?” And they said, “We think you should go to Bethlehem.” And that’s where I was for 33 years.

Helopoulos: Wow. Praise God. Joel, how about you?

Joel Beeke: I was brought under a very deep conviction of sin for about 18 months before I found deliverance from the age of 14 to just about when I turned 16. When God finally delivered me in Christ it was in good measure by reading the Puritan books in my dad’s bookcase. I read the whole bookcase late at night every night.

When I found that freedom I was so shy. I never raised my hand in class ever in my whole life and I hated standing in front of the class, but my tongue was unloosed. I started going to all the neighbors up and down the block. I had to bring them the gospel, but ministry never entered my mind at that point because the youngest minister in our denomination I think was 52, and I was 16. I thought old men were ministers. We lived in a very sheltered denomination. It was very conservative. No ruling elder in the church was under 50 years of age. So, that was just out of the question. I didn’t even think about it.

But I was working for my dad as a carpenter and there was a man who was very fussy. My dad had built a house for him and there were all kinds of weeds growing in his lawn. He would not put weed killer on it. He said, “Do you have some low person on the totem pole who could possibly pull all these weeds by hand over a period of one month?” Of course, I was the lowest guy on the totem pole, so I spent a month just pulling weeds.

I’ll just tell you like it is. I’ve given up trying to label it or trying to put fences around it. But this is exactly what happened. I was pulling weeds and not thinking even about God. I know it wasn’t a physical voice but it sure felt like one. It was a very subjective experience. I heard, “Go forth and preach the gospel to all the nations.” It was so powerful that I just stood up and my hands were shaking. I looked around and there was no one there. I was just overwhelmed. I couldn’t shake it off. I was just overwhelmed. I went to my pastor, who was very wise, and he said, “Well, maybe that’s the beginning of a call, but the Lord will confirm it in other ways.” And that’s what happened.

About six months later, I was asked to speak to all the young people of the denomination, which was only done by ministers. I was 16 years old. I just couldn’t understand how I got the invitation, but I was scared stiff. But that was a turning point in my life when I spoke on that occasion because the Lord, I think, gave me some freedom to speak. Then I started getting confirmations from other elders and ministers who said, “Have you ever considered the ministry?” Things began to escalate from there. But from the day that I received those words, “Go forth and preach the gospel to all the nations,” until today I never really doubted in the depths of my being for one second that God’s hand was in this. I could say, even as a 16-year-old, “Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel.”

Then it was a long process to get into the ministry in that denomination, but the Lord opened all those doors. When you’ve been a minister basically your whole life and your whole heart has been in it, you just can’t do anything else. You can’t even think about doing anything else. This is all-consuming. I think the call to the ministry varies a lot. A lot of men, when they come to our seminary, they think they’re called, but they’re not 100 percent sure. They’re testing the waters and that’s fine. God calls his servants in many different ways, but that’s how I was called. God is sovereign. Had I not been called in that incredibly overwhelmingly powerful way, there’s no way I ever would have been accepted in that denomination as a minister because that’s exactly what they were looking for. But I had no knowledge of all that. It’s just that God gave me what I needed to be accepted into the ministry.

Piper: So, you have to be a Dutch Reformed charismatic in order to be in that denomination? That’s what they were looking for?

Beeke: You have to read my two chapters against charismatics in my Reformed Systematic Theology.

Helopoulos: It is interesting that both of you were shy, that you didn’t want to stand up in front of people, and yet you felt the call to ministry. There are probably young men in this room saying, “Well, I’m an introvert. I’ve never been comfortable standing in front of people.” Was that something that you worked through? Is that something that you grew in? Was that something that you felt like once you started heading down the path of ministry that was just supernaturally provided for?

Piper: The summer of 1966 was the most important summer in my life so far. I not only found a wife that summer, Noël, who’s been my wife for 55 years, and not only heard that call but I wasn’t shy. I was paralyzed. I don’t joke about this at all. I didn’t have butterflies. I had paralysis. My folks took me to psychologists and no Christians believed in psychologists in 1964. This was mega serious and disabling.

I went off to Wheaton knowing that they required a speech course and knowing that I would save that till the end and drop out of school. I would go to a state school and finish there. That is exactly what I thought because there was no way I would do a speech class. This is an answer to your question. I didn’t work through it. It was a gift. And it came like this.

Chaplain Evan Welch came up to me that summer and said, “Johnny, will you pray in chapel?” Summer school chapel at Wheaton had about 500 students in it. And out of my mouth came the words, “How long do you have to pray?” And he said, “30 seconds or a minute.” And I said, “Yes.” To this day, I have no idea how that happened. I don’t know why I said yes. I walked back and forth on the front campus. I think I’ve made two vows in my life and this is one of them. I said to God, “If you will get me through a 30-second prayer behind that gigantic pulpit in Edmond Chapel, I will never say no to you again out of fear for a speaking opportunity.” And he got me through. A dam broke. It just broke. As I’ve looked back on it, I can’t help but think that a wife and a calling together produced that under the Holy Spirit.

This is just a guess but it’s worth thinking about. To have a woman come into your life when you’re a pimple-faced, insecure young man, who has never dated in your life, wondering if any girl could ever like you, and she likes you? This is very powerful. I really do believe this — and I don’t know how all the spiritual pieces fit together — that Noël’s love for me and God saying, “You’re going to study the Bible for the rest of your life,” did something together with that opportunity in chapel. So, I did take that speech class. I gave that speech on how to lift barbells because I thought if I moved around enough and showed barbells that it would distract people from how nervous I was. I won the Clarence Roddy Preaching Prize at Fuller Seminary three years later and I was on my face in those days thinking, “How did that happen?” To this day, I don’t know how it happened. It was just a gift.

Beeke: Well, the gospel unloosened my tongue. So I started speaking to people about the gospel at work, at school, every friend I had, and even strangers. When I was still in regular social situations where there was nothing special, I still felt kind of withdrawn and shy, but the ministry itself got me over that as well. It was just a matter of time there but I was painfully shy.

Helopoulos: When you think about the pastorate, most of us have different pastors in our minds that we’ve served with, or been under, or watched from afar. When you think, “This is the best pastor I know,” what is it that marks him?

Piper: You have to go first on this one.

Beeke: I would say he is marked by a passionate love for his people and being there, as that one book is called (Being There), and caring deeply and being very prayerful with your people. I was ordained on March 30, 1978, and two days later a minister came over who was 50 years a minister. So I asked him, “What advice would you have to give me? Give me all the advice you have from all those years of ministry.” He said, “I’ll give you one thing. And if you do that, everything else will fall in place.” I was all ears. He said, “Always pray with your people in everything you do and before everything you do. If you do it a thousand times in the ministry, pray before everything you do.” That impacted me tremendously. When a minister really prays with his people, when they walk in and they sit down to visit and they pray, beforehand and afterward, and they feel like he loves their soul more than they do, I think that’s a real pastor. He’s someone who really cares.

As you grow in ministry, especially long-term ministry when you’re there 10 or more years or more, you might go a whole generation or the next generation and you become like a father to the whole congregation. This is like your extended family. I think that’s a sign of a really good pastor too. You become a kind of a father figure where people feel very free to come to you for anything. They’ll tell you secrets that they’ve told nobody else and know you will hold it confidential. You’re just a real pastor to them.

Helopoulos: That’s good, Joel.

Piper: I don’t like questions that ask for the best anything, except God, Bible, Christ, and gospel. Those are all the best. Because I’m fallible I just don’t know. So, I reject the question.

Helopoulos: I’ll take it.

Piper: I’m going to change the question because I think I can answer what you are asking without claiming to know what’s best.

Beeke: This is getting very complicated, John.

Piper: I really like dead pastors better than living pastors. What pastor alive has a significant influence on me? I’m going to say Mark Dever and I’m going to tell you why. Number one, he is solid as a rock theologically. Number two, he loves the church and I’m convicted because I don’t think I love the church as much as Mark does. He takes membership really seriously. I don’t think I took membership seriously enough. And then there are two things that are most significant (and that’s like best significant): He’s thick-skinned and happy. I’m looking at the camera now. Mark is going to watch this. I’ve never met anybody like him who, no matter what happens, seems to be able to ride the wave of criticism and stay happy without being stoic. So thank you. I wish I were more like that. I tend to get angry.

The last thing is evangelism. The first time I ever met Mark, he took me up on top of his church. This was 15 or 20 years ago. He just walked around the rim of the top of his church pointing out the unbelievers’ homes where he was working on people. For those four reasons, at least, I like hanging out with Mark Dever. It mainly makes me feel guilty. But that’s good for me. You don’t want to just hang out with people that make you feel affirmed. You need to feel convicted.

Helopoulos: Mark does have thick skin and he can be very clear in what he says and he does it with a smile. I remember last time we had him at URC, I was standing next to him at our church. A Baptist member of our congregation came up to him and said, “I’m in this PCA church, a presbyterian church, I don’t believe what they do about baptism, what should I do?” He said, “Leave and find a baptist church.” He said it with a smile right while I was standing next to him so we may have different appreciations of Mark, but I do appreciate some of the same things about him.

Let me ask you this. Starting out in ministry, what were some of the things that you were too concerned about when you first started out in ministry and what are other things that took decades for you to figure out that you needed to be more concerned about as you pastored your congregations?

Piper: Let me give one concrete example because I think it’ll be helpful to people who might struggle. I don’t think I understood for about 30 years that Jesus’s radical command to gouge your eye out because of lust, and Paul’s command to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, should apply with equal violence to nonsexual sins. I learned early on that as a young man lust in your head and in your body — and the temptations to act it out in pornography or worse — had to be killed the way Jesus said so. He said, “If, if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out” (Matthew 5:29). I mean, that’s crazy radical. He is saying, “Use a screwdriver and your eyeball comes out.” I mean, that’s crazy language, right? That’s about as violent as you can get, so go after lust that way. Now I got that as a young man and I think I did it. I’ve never committed fornication. I’ve never cheated on my wife. I fight any temptation to look at anything inappropriate and I fight with violence.

That was a given and I hope it’s a given in this room. That’s what he said. Do that. Better to go to heaven with one eye than to go to hell with two eyes. And you’re going to go to hell if you give into lust. That’s what he said. Why? Why did it take me until 2010, give or take, to learn you can do the same with self-pity? You can do the same with anger. You can do the same with sullenness. I had these habitual sins ruining my marriage for years and they were making life hard for me and for her. I had this passive notion about sanctification with regard to that kind of sin. I thought the only way you fought that kind of sin is by getting happy in Jesus and the expulsive power of a new affection pushes it out. It wasn’t working, whereas the Bible says that, and then it says, “Kill it.” Be killing sin or it will be killing you. Take the same screwdriver to your self-pity.

For some reason, in 2010, I thought, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” doesn’t just apply to lust.” Fear and trembling applies to when you walk in the house. Your wife and daughter are having a really happy time looking at some girl show on the computer and you came home expecting to be welcomed and treated with some acknowledgment that you’re there and have a pleasant evening together. And they barely look up. Guys, this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of ego and sin. I know the sequence of sins that follow at that moment — self-pity, anger, withdrawal, sullenness, and everything goes bad in the family. That’s my problem. That’s not their problem. That’s my problem.

So, I walk in, it happens, and I see it coming. It’s like lust. You see it coming. And I take hold of the sword of the Spirit and say, “You’re not going to win this one.” And I smile. Now you might think that’s fake. Well, it was a little bit. I smile. I greet them like everything’s just fine, even though they’re paying no attention to me at all. I go upstairs and I get down on my knees and I fight like hell to kill that sin. Actually, I fight like heaven to kill that sin. I fight until it’s dead. It’s dead. And I can go downstairs as a new man, loving my family and not feeling self-pity. It took me a long time. Now, that’s not just pastoring, but it really messed me up, I think, a lot. I hope I’m a better husband and a better father in the last 14 years or so than I was before. That’s one example of something that took me a long time to learn.

Beeke: My response is not going to be that dramatic, but it was good. It was very good what you said. I think that when you’re really a young minister and you’re with a lot of older ministers and you’re being watched and examined and feeling pressed into a certain mold, I think I was too concerned about myself and how I did. It was a huge relief to really break out of that and be more concerned about God’s glory. It wasn’t about how well I preached, but it was what the Lord did with that sermon in so and so’s life.

I’ve come to a greater appreciation over the years with the complexity of what God uses for the conversion of someone and their growth in grace. I’m just happy now to have a little place in the back of the watch as I was talking about. Maybe it’s this sermon, maybe it’s that book I wrote, or maybe it’s that conference I was at. It just had a little place to play in someone’s spiritual growth and I’m just very content with that. As you get older, you lose that sense of jealousy of others and you just feel more comfortable I think in your own skin to be who God wants you to be and use the gifts that God has given you and not worry about the gifts of someone else.

I remember when I was first married to Mary. I’m a very close friend of Sinclair Ferguson. One time we were sitting down and he had a book to write in two weeks. I said, “Two weeks? Weeks?” He said, “Weeks.” It was due to Zondervan. I said, “Well, how are you going to do it?” He said, “Well, I write one chapter a night. It doesn’t work for me to go over what I’ve written. So I just write one draft and then I send it off.” I said, “You’re going to write 14 chapters in two weeks?” He said, “Yeah.” So I came home to my wife and I said, “Wow. Can you imagine if I was Sinclair Ferguson how many books I could write?” And she said, “Honey, I think you better be content with the gifts God has given you.” Ouch. But she was so right. She said it so sweetly and mildly. Just be content. You pastors, be content in your own skin. Don’t try to use gifts God hasn’t given you, but do cultivate the gifts he has given you to the max. And then just be God-centered and try to focus on his glory and the salvation of souls and their growth in grace.

I have a little sign in my bathroom that says this, “A minister’s real wages are when he sees his people coming closer to Christ.” And that gives me more satisfaction than any paycheck or anything else. If I see someone growing in grace, oh it’s so satisfying. So, be more concerned about God’s glory and the welfare of souls, and less concerned about yourself. Just be faithful and do what you can do.

Helopoulos: That’s really good and it’s one of the things I appreciate most about both of you. You use your gifts where the Lord has placed you for the benefit of the body, the greater body, your local church, and you’re committed to it.

One of the things I’ve watched about both of you is that you’re willing to contend for the faith when it’s necessary in ways that are public, when it’s being assaulted, and yet you’re not contentious for the faith. We live in a day where people are trying to wrestle through that. I think pastors are more and more put in positions like that. John, I think about you and complementarianism. You felt like that was something that to be contended for in our day. You also focused on the new perspective on Paul. Joel, I think about you with assurance of salvation in your own context in the Dutch Church, seeing how that was affecting people in the Dutch Reformed world. You were contending for a right view.

How have you decided with the gifts you’ve been given when it is that you are to speak to something, contend for it in that kind of way, and then at other times decide, “No, I’m not going into that battle”? Some are always fighting and some are never willing to fight. If everyone loves you, there’s a problem. If everyone hates you, you’re a problem. It seems like you guys have done this well. How have you decided what to contend for and what not to?

Piper: As I’ve looked at the things that I’ve contended for — you mentioned two of them like complementarianism, justification, sovereignty of God, Reformed theology, the five points of Calvinism, and several others — I don’t think I operate from a set of principles on that. But when I step back and look, there are principles at work. To what degree is the authority of Scripture being undermined? To what degree is the gospel being compromised? To what degree is the nature of God being minimized or called into question? And to what degree is the imago dei being diminished? I say that because I’m a real hater of abortion. I will stand in front of Planned Parenthood in three weeks and lead in prayer. I hate killing children in the womb. I think it’s wicked. And I think, “Why do I feel so urgent about that?” I think it’s because God is the one who is knitting us together in our mother’s womb. This is his business to make images of himself like that. We better not intrude upon that. That’s really evil. So those are four categories — Scripture, God, gospel, image of God. To what degree is a false teaching starting to spread that is making those doctrines obscure, that is upsetting or ruining them?

And I think some of it is just subjective regarding what you love. I love the sovereignty of God. I became a Calvinist late — that is, I didn’t grow up with it. I would date my conversion to Calvinism in the fall of 1968. I was about 22 years old. Guys came to Fuller Seminary from Reformed schools and they were tired of Calvinism. They had it running out of their ears since they were six, and I was leaping for joy at the sovereignty of God in my salvation as I saw it in the Bible. To this day, I’ve never stopped leaping. I love sovereign grace. So I would go to the mat for that over and over again. I want to be a part of movements, schools, ministries, and conferences that highlight the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace and salvation. So I think what you love is a big piece of it.

Beeke: I agree with that answer. What you love and what you feel really passionate about and you feel the Lord has laid on your heart will kind of shape your ministry. You will preach the whole counsel of God if you’re a faithful minister and you’re exegeting through Bible books and you’ll do it with love and passion, but there are certain things that stand out especially with the passing of the years.

You mentioned the assurance of faith, I feel the same way about Reformed experiential preaching. When I was in an Eastern European country, I was assaulted and my hands were tied behind my back, I was tied around my ankles, and they put a rag in my mouth and tied me around my eyes. I was on the ground and they were running a knife up and down my back and they were shouting out that they were the mafia. People had just told me all day long that if you ever get in the hands of the mafia, you’re a dead man. I thought I was going to die.

Well, I found out in the end that they really weren’t the mafia and they took the keys out of my pocket, went to the seminary where I was teaching, stripped the seminary of all the computers, sold them on the black market, and left me alone. I finally worked myself free. I didn’t even pray for myself during those 45 minutes because I was sure I was dying. I was just praying for my wife and ministries and kids. But I had a light bulb moment when I sat up and actually was alive. I just said, “Lord, I vow that I will spend every moment of my waking life from here on to do what I was already doing but I will do it more intensely, to promote Reformed experiential preaching and teaching all around the world.”

That’s why I train men from all around the world. Everything in my ministry and my book ministry is channeled in that, much like John has the passion about delighting in God and God getting his most glory. It comes through in all his writings, and this comes through in all my writings and all my commitment. I want people to understand what it means. I think the joy of the Christian life becomes so much greater when you really experience the doctrines of grace and don’t just have them in your head. My focus is there. So I’m not really an apologetics guy, defending this or defending that all the time. But when push comes to shove, abortion is one thing I feel very strongly about. I preach very strongly against that. But I think you need to find the right balance for you as a minister and what God is calling you to.

Family worship is another big thing for me. I’ve preached on it in 50 different countries around the world. I just feel so strongly that we have to get back to the old family worship style where dads are speaking to their children every day, as they did in the Reformation and Puritan times, about the truths of God. If you call that apologetics in a way, I’m big on that. But I just don’t think it’s my business nor my gifting to get involved, for example, in other seminaries’ intramural debates. This seminary is pitting this against the seminary and people come up to me and say, “As a seminary president, what do you think of that?” I’m not going to enter into that. I’m going to stay above that fray, unless it’s a really heretical doctrine.

I’m going to put my energy, for the most part, into promoting positive things, especially where the church is not realizing its calling. I will speak out strongly against worldliness in churches because I think that’s a huge problem. When I have to preach a really warning sermon against a particular sin, I do it because I feel compelled to do it and I think I do it with all my heart, but afterwards I am just completely wiped out. I think you each have to find your own way as pastors and know yourself but also be faithful to God and what he’s calling you to do.

Piper: I want to just underline that. In your pulpit over time, you shouldn’t want to be known for being about controversy. It should be that your pulpit is about Christ, salvation, joy, heaven, and holiness. Having a robust sense of walking in hungry and walking out fed with the glories of the gospel and the glories of Christ can happen with sprinkled controversies. You do need to say things about the horrible things in the culture, but you don’t need for that to be the symphonic theme so that people say, “Oh, that’s the church where they’re always fighting somebody.” But rather let it be said, “That’s the church where they seem to be really happy in God, where they seem to love the glory of God.” But they know where you stand on just about everything.

I think it’s a mistake when churches and pastors are not clear where they stand on homosexuality, on transgenderism, on abortion, and on all kinds of things that come along in the culture, though they’ll change over time. But if it’s not plain what’s going to happen is that people are going to just start coming to church and want to know what you believe and that will breed a lukewarm Church in the long run that’s wishy-washy in its stands and its doctrines. But in order to accomplish that you really don’t have to harp on those things, you don’t. You can harp on God and then people will feel, “This church is mainly about Christ and his greatness, about the gospel and its greatness, about God and his greatness, about mission and its greatness, and I know exactly where they stand on biblical issues.”

Helopoulos: That’s really helpful. Let’s continue along that line of thought. You both have pastored the same church for decades and have, by all accounting as we can see this side of heaven, has remained effective for all those decades. No doubt there are ups and downs and so there are in any church. But it’s odd for a pastor in our day and age to remain in a church for 30 or 40 years. What else would be an encouragement to us? Should more men be aimed at having a long-term ministry in the same place? If so, what are some things that would help to maintain having an effective ministry in the same place for a long time?

Beeke: I actually have a 150-page paperback book right now that’s 95 percent done and it’s called Persevering in Ministry. Two chapters are on the subject of maintaining long-term ministry. There are so many things to say on this but one thing I want to get out to you men is this. There’s an old Dutch saying that the first year is a honeymoon year, in years two and three people actually start to hear what you’re saying, and years four through five or maybe six are the years where you have a lot of kickback and trials, which is exactly when many ministers jump ship and go to another church. But what you want to do is you want to stay the course. You don’t want to be a hireling that flees the sheep at that point. You want to stay the course beyond that. And you get to years seven, eight, and nine, the people that are really opposed to your ministry will leave at that point because they’ll say, “This guy is never going anywhere so we’re going.” Don’t get me wrong. I always hate to see my sheep leave, but sometimes when you’re in long-term ministry (year 10 and forward) you have a little skirmish now and then, but there’s stability in the church. You’ve been there and you’ve been feeding them and the vast bulk of the people, 95 percent or more now, are in full harmony with what you’re teaching and you’re not going anywhere.

These are the most fruitful years where you’re training their children and their grandchildren. There’s just a beauty about long-term ministry where you’re a father figure in the congregation. When we sing the Psalter before I start preaching, I often just kind of look around and say, “Oh, there’s that man I helped 22 years ago when his marriage was in trouble. And there’s that woman right now who has secret problems with her husband and I’ve been working with them. There’s that young person who I worked with in getting off of pornography.” I just let all these needs and all these experiences just flow over me as I begin to preach. And then it’s like I’m preaching to my own family. It’s so different from preaching at a conference or preaching in a church you’ve only been in two or three years.

So, I think there are huge advantages in long-term ministry, provided you stay fresh and you keep studying and you keep bringing new things and old from the pulpit. If you just lean on the old barrel of sermons, of course, it’s going to run dry and you’re going to flounder. But if you can stay fresh, long-term ministry — all things being equal — is God’s normal way, I think, of building up a flock.

Piper: God wrote a book. Do any of you believe that? If that’s true, if the creator of the universe, who upholds everything by the word of his power is taking this whole history to a conclusion where you’ll either be infinitely happy with him forever or you’ll suffer forever, and he tells us all about that in the Bible, then it is inexhaustible. So staying fresh is right here. Maybe I would just say those two things. Believing the Bible and opening it to your people week in, week out means that you have something glorious to say every week. I have never walked into the pulpit not excited about what I have to say, including tomorrow night. We have a Book.

Number two, feed yourself on this Book. It’s what you were talking about earlier. You must stay alive. The number one task is to get up and get happy in Jesus every morning, as George Müller said. Get up and get happy in Jesus every morning because your people need your happiness in Jesus. The last thing I would say is that once you’ve given 10 years to a church and you finally persuaded most of the leaders about Reformed theology — and you finally in a baptist church created something called elders — and you’ve built something amazing and somebody invites you to a church that’s 10,000 people bigger, you say, “I wouldn’t want to start this over again. Are you kidding me? This has been hard work for 10 years and we’re here. We’re here. Now we can finally do something together.”

Beeke: But it’s also true that when you have a built-up relationship for many years and you really love your people, when you get a call from another church, you pray about it, but you just say, “I can’t leave these people. There’s too much invested. There’s too much love here. I just can’t leave them. How can I leave all these different people I’ve helped pastorally and preached to for all these years? And I see them growing. I just can’t leave.” So, the old Dutch style was when you accept a call to another church, you have to know a loosening from your present church and a bonding to the other church. And when you’re in a church for a long time, loosening from that church is very difficult. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m not saying God won’t call you to another church. But then you have to know that loosening. You don’t just say, “Oh, well, I’ve been here a number of years and the weather is better over there. I’m going to be a little closer to my kids so I’m going to go there.” No, you have to have a divine sense of calling to leave a church that you’ve shepherded for so long.

Helopoulos: Incredibly helpful. A lot of wisdom has been shared this afternoon. We appreciate it and appreciate your ministries.

I stood at a friend’s kitchen sink, surprised and somewhat disturbed. My friend’s wife had taped a notecard on the wall behind the sink with some spiritual reminders. That in itself was nothing new: though still a young believer, I had seen such cards posted to desks, doors, bathroom mirrors, and the like. No, what surprised me was one particular reminder this young woman had chosen to write.

The exact words escape me, but the sense still burns in my memory: “You deserve hell.”

You deserve hell? On the one hand, I had no intellectual objection to the statement. I myself had recently come to see the darkness of my native heart. I had realized that I was not just mistaken or in need of occasional forgiveness, but actually hell-deserving — and hell-destined apart from the grace of Jesus.

But the notecard still disturbed me. Yes, we deserve hell, but should we recall the fact as often as we wash our hands? Should the reality of hell, and the remembrance that we once were headed there, stay warm in our minds?

I can certainly imagine someone thinking too much about hell. The unspeakable sorrow of eternal punishment, dwelt on overmuch, could overwhelm the sense of joy pulsing through the New Testament. But a recent survey of Paul’s letters leads me to think my friend’s wife was closer to his apostolic heart than my instinct to recoil.

We may not post reminders above our sinks, but somehow the thought needs to become more than passing and occasional. We deserve hell, and only one thing stands between us and that outer darkness: Jesus.

Remember Hell

When we turn to Paul’s letters, we actually notice something even more startling than the notecard over my friend’s sink. Regularly throughout his writings, the apostle not only reminds the churches of their formerly hopeless state; he also warns them of their ongoing danger should they drift from Christ. He says not only, “You deserve hell,” but also, “Make sure you don’t end up there.”

Consider just a few of Paul’s bracing warnings to the churches:

“If you live according to the flesh you will die” (Romans 8:13).
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” (1 Corinthians 6:9).
“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6).
“Put to death . . . what is earthly in you. . . . On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6).
“The Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you” (1 Thessalonians 4:6).

The situation becomes even more surprising when we consider Paul’s overall posture toward the believers in these churches. Paul was “satisfied” that the Romans were “full of goodness” (Romans 15:14). He was confident the Corinthians were “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:2). He saw the Ephesians as already seated with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–6); he rejoiced in the firmness of the Colossians’ faith (Colossians 2:5); he knew God had chosen the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:4).

And yet he warned. In fact, Paul places his warnings near the heart of his apostolic calling: “[Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28). So, amid his encouragements, and throughout his doctrinal instruction, and even as he exulted in the hope of glory, he would sometimes grow solemn and still, lower his tone, and turn his ink black.

“Dear brothers,” he would write in effect, “Christ is gloriously yours. But until you see him face to face, don’t imagine yourselves out of danger. Hell still awaits any who forsake him.”

Why Did Paul Warn?

Why did Paul warn his beloved churches, sometimes with unsettling sternness? A closer look at his warnings sheds some light. Among several purposes Paul had, we might consider three in particular that rise to the surface.

These three purposes are not limited to Paul’s apostolic calling, or even to the pastoral calling today. Pastors, as God’s watchmen, may have a special responsibility to blow eternity’s trumpet, but Paul and the other apostles expected all Christians to play their part in admonishing, exhorting, warning (Colossians 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; Hebrews 3:13).

So, as we consider when and why Paul warned of hell, we (pastors especially, but also all of us) learn when and why we should too.

1. To Alarm the Presumptuous

First, Paul warned of hell to alarm the presumptuous. Hell was a siren to awake spiritual sleepers, a large “Danger” sign for those drifting off the narrow way, a merciful thorn for feet too comfortable near the cliff of sin.

“We are never more in danger than when we think we are not.”

Despite Paul’s overall positive posture toward the churches, he knew that some in these communities were in danger of spiritual presumption. In Corinth, for example, some acted arrogantly when they should have felt fear and trembling (1 Corinthians 5:2). Some treated sexual immorality with frightful indifference (1 Corinthians 6:12–20). Some did not hesitate to haul their brothers to court (1 Corinthians 6:1–8).

They were growing numb and didn’t know it. So Paul sounded the warning:

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)

If a brother seems spiritually presumptuous; if exhortation and entreaty seem to land lightly; if his sin has become habitual, and his hand seems lifted higher and higher — he may need to hear a word about hell. At first, such a word may sound as unwelcome as an alarm awaking him from a deep and comfortable slumber. But if he is in Christ, then such a warning will have its God-intended effect in time. His initial offense or displeasure will give way to the dreadful realization that the house is on fire; he must escape.

By all means speak wisely, carefully, with the kind of trembling that fits so fearful a topic. But take courage from Paul, and believe that sometimes, love alarms.

2. To Protect the Vulnerable

Often when Paul warns of hell, however, he does not have presumptuous people in mind. Usually, these stern words come to beloved brothers and sisters whose faith seems firm, to churches like the Romans, the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians. Why does he warn such saints? He does so, in part, because as long as we are in this world, we are vulnerable to becoming deceived with what Paul calls “empty words” (Ephesians 5:6).

First-century societies, just like ours, had their broadly acceptable sins, their celebrated evils. They also had scoffers and false teachers who shrugged off the judgment to come. And Paul knew that, over time, such a society could subtly dull the Christian conscience. God’s people could slowly become swayed by “plausible arguments” (Colossians 2:4): “You really think God cares about what we do in our bedroom?” “How could so many people be wrong?” “You seriously expect God to judge something that so many do?”

Such questions, spoken or merely suggested by a pervasive societal mood, can create an atmosphere where hell sits uncertainly on the soul — where eternity becomes a vague, weightless idea, a peripheral thought that holds little power against the most popular sins of the day. That is, unless we regularly hear Paul (or a pastor or friend) say, “Let no one deceive you” (Ephesians 5:6). No matter how common, no matter how lauded, “The Lord is an avenger in all these things” (1 Thessalonians 4:6).

We need such warnings today, perhaps especially from our pulpits. What sins are so normal throughout our cities, so typical in entertainment, so characteristic of our own pasts that we are in danger of becoming numb to their hell-deserving guilt? Pornography and fornication? Casual drunkenness? Love of money and luxuries? Internet reviling?

If the vulnerable among us (and to some degree, we’re all vulnerable) are going to see the deep pit at the end of such well-traveled paths, then someone needs to point it out — and not only once.

3. To Humble the Mature

Finally, and maybe most surprising of all, Paul warned of hell not only to alarm the presumptuous and protect the vulnerable, but also to humble the mature. No matter how strong others seemed, Paul did not think they were too strong for danger, too firm to fall. He knew the most established believer stands just a few yards away from spiritual peril, and just a few more yards from spiritual ruin. So, he writes, “Do not become proud, but fear” (Romans 11:20).

Remarkably, Paul counted himself among those in need of such warnings. Hear the great apostle admonish his own soul: “I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:26–27). Can you imagine Paul disqualified? Can you fathom the mighty missionary, the bold church planter, the zealous apostle barred from heaven? He could.

I recently encountered this rare apostolic spirit in a letter from Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813–1843), who wrote to a friend and fellow minister,

I charge you, be clothed with humility, or you will yet be a wandering star, for which is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. . . . If you lead sinners to yourself, and not to Christ, Immanuel will cast the star out of His right hand into utter darkness. (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 130)

Why speak so to a fruitful, faithful, mature minister of Christ? Because M’Cheyne (and Paul before him) knew the paradoxical nature of Christian perseverance: We are never more in danger than when we think we are not. And we are never safer than when we feel our weakness, distrust our strength, and lean hard upon the arm of our Lord Jesus. “He that walketh humbly walketh safely,” John Owen writes (Works, 6:217). And he who remembers hell walks humbly.

Him We Proclaim

Consider again Paul’s description of his apostolic calling in Colossians 1:28: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” We have focused here on Paul’s warnings, but we dare not miss the context in which they come.

Hell was not the main theme of Paul’s ministry. Unlike some fire-and-brimstone preachers, he did not thunder forth the judgment to the neglect of other doctrines or in ways that sunk others into all-consuming fear. He did not write, “Hell we proclaim,” but “Him we proclaim” — Christ.

Why, ultimately, did Paul warn of hell? Because Jesus was too wonderful, too marvelous not to use every righteous means available to “present everyone mature in Christ,” to win people to him and keep people near him. Others needed to know the danger of hell because they needed to know the danger of missing eternal life with him. Warnings were his way of casting us into the arms of Christ, the safest place in all the world.

And so he warned. And so the wise remember, in one way or another, that we deserve hell, and that we are not (for now) beyond the danger of hell. Read it in Scripture; say it to your soul; write it over your kitchen sink if you must. Think of hell long enough and often enough to keep you close to Jesus, humble and happy and hoping in him.