In this first session, I would like for us to linger together in my favorite eldership passage: 1 Peter 5:1–5. But before I read those verses and pray for our time together, let’s mark the word “So” at the beginning of verse 1. “So” links this passage to chapter 4 and therefore to the hard times Peter and these elders knew.

First Peter 4:12 mentions “fiery trials.” Verse 13, “sufferings.” Verse 14, “insults.” Verses 15, 16, 19: “suffer,” “suffers,” “suffer.” This is a passage for pastor-elders who know hard times, like the last three years may have been for some.

Bright and inspiring as the words of 1 Peter 5:1–5 can be, they are set against a dark backdrop. Don’t miss this context. The joys of pastoral ministry are not joys in a vacuum. They are amazing joys, accentuated and deepened against the backdrop of struggle and hardship and suffering. In the endless challenges of pastoral ministry, its joys shine out all the clearer.

And note how Peter gets to elders in chapter 5. A context of suffering makes the teaching and leadership of the elders all the more essential. Pastor-elders, and their teaching and leading, are always vital to congregational health, but especially in suffering.

Gift of the Great Shepherd

So, 1 Peter 5:1–5:

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

One of the most precious promises in all the Bible for pastors is Jesus’s words in Matthew 16:18: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Jesus is the chief Shepherd; he is “the Shepherd and Overseer of [our] souls” (1 Peter 2:25; 5:4). He is “the great shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13:20). He builds his church. And his work will not fail. He will prevail — over hell, and sin, and death, and disease, and division.

And one of the ways Christ builds and governs his church, and blesses her, is by giving her the gift of local leaders under him: “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–12).

Faithful pastors and elders are a gift from Christ to guide and keep his church. As pastors, this is a truth that may not be healthy to regularly emphasize in public (as it will seem self-serving), but it can be good to have someone else say it to you from time to time. So that’s what I’d like to do here at the outset of our time together today: brother pastors and elders, you are a gift from the risen Christ to your flock.

No matter what that recent email said. No matter how flat the last sermon fell. No matter what you hear whispered about leaders in society (not to mention the cynical thoughts that aren’t whispered). No matter what that person posted online about your church or your elder team, or you in particular — and you didn’t see it, but your wife saw it and said, “Did you see this?”

No matter what has been said explicitly or implied to the contrary, you, dear brother, as you lean on Christ and remain faithful to his word — you are a gift from him to your church.

Of course, we pastors and elders are flawed and sinful. Some who carry the name “pastor” have made terrible mistakes, sinned grievously, fleeced their flocks, and harmed the very ones they were commissioned to protect. But such failures were not owing to the biblical vision of what true leadership is. Rather, such failures fell short of God’s vision, or departed from it altogether. In fact, such failures show — by way of contrast — what real leadership in the church should be.

That’s our focus today: what Christ calls leaders in his church to be — especially the “lead office” or “teaching office” in the church, that of “pastor” or “elder” or “overseer,” three terms in the New Testament for the same lead office.

Preliminary Observations

Now, in this session, I want us to give most of our focus to the three not-but pairs in verses 2–3, but first let me make three preliminary observations on the passage, which are vital to the vision of eldership and pastoral ministry that we’ll be rehearsing today.

1. Elders are plural.

Elders is plural in 1 Peter 5:1. One of the most important truths to rehearse about Christian ministry is that Christ means for it to be teamwork. As in 1 Peter 5, so in every context in which local-church pastor-elders are mentioned in the New Testament, the title is plural.

Christ alone reigns as Lord of the church. He is head (Ephesians 1:22; 5:23; Colossians 1:18), and he alone. The glory of singular leadership in the church is his alone. And he means for his undershepherds to labor, and thrive, not alone but as a team.

The kind of pastors we long for in this age are good men with good friends — friends who love them enough to challenge their instincts, tell them when they’re mistaken, hold them to the fire of accountability, and make life both harder and better, both more uncomfortable and more fruitful.

Now, if pastoral ministry for you is not teamwork, if you find yourself in a lone pastor-elder situation, for whatever reason, I don’t think that means you’re in error or sin. But I do think it’s an error to prefer it, and not dream toward more, and pray for more, and take some modest steps toward looking for and raising up the kind of men who could minister alongside you.

So, number one, elders here (as elsewhere in the New Testament) are plural.

2. Elders are pastors.

Second, observe the main verb in 1 Peter 5:1–5, which is Peter’s charge to the elders: “shepherd the flock of God.” Shepherd, as a verb, is a rich image. Consider all that shepherds do: they feed, water, tend, herd, protect, guide, lead to pasture, govern, care for, nurture. To shepherd is a picture of what we might call “benign rule” (the opposite of “domineering,” as we’ll see). In shepherding, the good of the shepherd is bound up with the good of the sheep.

The concept of shepherding also has a rich Old Testament background, not just in the patriarchs and the nation of Israel in Egypt and in the wilderness, but also in King David, the shepherd boy who became the nation’s great king, God’s anointed one, who came to anticipate the greater Anointed One to come.

So, with David, and in the prophets, shepherding takes on messianic overtones. David, of course, had his own grave failures in shepherding the nation, but after David, the trend of the nation’s kings became worse and worse, with only a couple exceptions.

Shepherds Feed

Five centuries later, the prophet Ezekiel condemned the nation’s leaders for “feeding themselves” rather than feeding the sheep:

Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. (Ezekiel 34:2–4)

The appointed leaders of God’s people should have fed them, not fed on them. They should have strengthened their people, and sought them out, and healed them, bound up their wounds, brought them back to God, but instead they governed them “with force and harshness” — not benign rule but malignant rule.

So, the people long for a shepherd, a king, who will rule them with strength and gentleness, with clarity and kindness, with decisiveness and persuasion and patience and grace, even as he protects them from their enemies. And in response, again and again, God not only says, “I will rescue my flock,” but also, “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:22–23). Note the prominence of feeding in shepherding.

The Good Shepherd’s Charge

The prophet Micah foretells that from Bethlehem, the city of David, will “come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel” (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:6). During his life, Jesus himself says he is the good shepherd (John 10:11), who, rather than taking from his sheep, comes to give, and to give them life, and even to give his own life for them. He is the long-promised Shepherd.

Then amazingly, at the end of the Gospel of John, when Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him (this same Peter who wrote 1 Peter), Peter says yes, and then Jesus says three times to him, “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” and “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17).

Here “feeding” and “shepherding” (or “pastoring”) are synonymous. Jesus, the good shepherd, has finally come, and given himself as the Lamb for his sheep, but now he is leaving, and now he will pastor his sheep through Peter and other undershepherds — not just apostles, but local-church elders, overseers, pastors.

So Paul says in Acts 20:28 to the elders in Ephesus, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock [!], in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for [that is, pastor] the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” The elders are also overseers, and they are to “care for” — or literally, pastor — “the church of God” (elders = overseers = pastors).

Finally, in the book of Revelation, we find two images of Jesus as shepherd. The Lamb, as shepherd, “will guide them to springs of living water” (Revelation 7:17), and in three texts, he will rule “with a rod of iron” (Revelation 2:27; 12:5; 19:15). Which doesn’t mean he is forceful or harsh with his people, but that he protects them from their enemies (with his rod). The shepherd’s rod and staff are for protecting and guiding his flock: “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

Elders shepherd. That’s just a quick taste of the richness in this shepherding image: centrally, feeding and watering (“green pastures” and “still waters,” Psalm 23:2), but also protecting. Shepherding means caring for the sheep, and leading with gentleness and kindness, with persuasion and patience, and wielding the rod of protection with strength and decisiveness toward various threats to the flock.

So, elders is plural, and elders are pastors.

3. Elders exercise oversight.

A third and final preliminary observation, more briefly: the verb that augments “shepherd” is “exercising oversight” (episkopountes). It’s a form of the noun overseer used in Acts 20:28, as well as in four other New Testament texts (Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:7; 1 Peter 2:25). “Oversee” in this context doesn’t mean only to watch and observe, but also to “see to it” that important observations about the flock, and any threats to it, also become tangible initiatives and actions in the church.

Which brings us to the heart of this passage, where Peter gives us three “not-buts” — not this but that. Verses 2–3: “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight . . .

not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you;
not for shameful gain, but eagerly;
not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”

Let’s take them in reverse order.

1. Not Domineering, but Exemplifying

We saw God’s condemnation for the leaders of Israel who ruled “with force and harshness.” Peter says, “not domineering” — which is the same language elsewhere translated “not lording it over.” It’s built on a strong verb (katakurieuo) that can refer in other contexts to

Jesus’s lordship (Romans 14:9; 1 Timothy 6:15);
the kind of lordship sin once had, and should no longer have, over us (Romans 6:9, 14; 7:1);
or the kind of lordship Christian leaders do not have over those in their charge (Luke 22:25).

The intensified form of the verb here in 1 Peter 5 is the same one Jesus uses in Mark 10:42–43:

Those who are considered [dokeō, seeming, purporting, thinking (hoi dokountes archein)] rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you.

Okay, then, what will be so among us? Verses 43–45:

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So, the opposite of “not lording it over” others is serving them, assisting their good, attending to their joy. Like Christ himself, not coming to be served but to serve; not to be assisted, but to assist; not to be attended to, but to attend to.

With the same language, Paul says to the Corinthians about his labors as an apostle, “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy” (2 Corinthians 1:24). As in Mark 10, “lord it over” implies the exercise of privilege, the seeking and obtaining of personal or private benefit — benefit from them (versus through or with them).

Paul’s vision of the opposite in leadership is “[working] with you for your joy.” The “we” here is Paul with his assistants Timothy and Silas (2 Corinthians 1:19). He says, “we work”: we give effort, expend energy; it is not just overflow but work, labor (as Jesus says in Matthew 9:37–38: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest”). It might begin almost effortlessly, as overflow, but then it takes effort (sometimes great effort) to complete. Spiritual leadership, pastoral ministry is work, requiring a work ethic. And Paul, of all people, was not one to suffer laziness, and especially among pastor-elders.

But this work isn’t alone. Not only is there a “we” in the company of the leaders, but it’s also “with you” — with the people. Pastors equip the saints to engage, expend effort, and invest energy — to work with us (which is vital to keep in mind in our discipling and counseling; we work with them, not instead of them). We don’t do it all for them; we go the extra mile, putting in more work, to win them to leaning in, working with us, taking responsibility, not just being consumers.

And that work, Paul says, is “for your joy.” Not thin, fleeting sugar highs. He’s talking real, deep, lasting, long-term, durable joy in Christ. Joy that tastes of the next age even in this painful, evil one. In Christian joy, our promised, blissful future in Christ is brought into the painful present — which means the frictions and sufferings of our present times do not preclude real joy even now but make us all the more desperate for real joy.

So, Christian leaders, as workers for the joy of their people, are not to be controlling and domineering, lording over them. Rather, they are to serve (in the words of Jesus), as workers for their people’s joy (in the words of Paul) and as examples to the flock (in the words of Peter): “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”

2. Not for Shameful Gain, but Eagerly

“Shameful gain” would be some benefit not befitting of the work — or some gain for the leader that is not a gain, but a loss, for the flock, and the glory of Christ — whether it’s money as the driving motivation, or power, or respect, or comfort, or the chance to perform and be on the platform. In terms of “eagerness,” the epistle to the Hebrews gives this important glimpse into the dynamic of Christian leadership as workers for the joy of the flock:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

Hebrews 13:17 is the reason John Piper says that “there is a joy without which pastors cannot profit their people.” This is a beautiful, marriage-like vision of the complementary relationship between the church and its leaders.

The leaders, for their part, labor, they work hard, for the advantage — the profit, the gain — of the church. And the church, for its part, wants its leaders to work not only hard but happily, without groaning, because the pastors’ joy in leading will lead to the church’s own benefit. The people want their leaders to labor with joy because they know their leaders are working for theirs.

Christ gives leaders to his people for their joy. Pastors are glad workers for the gladness of their people in God. And if the people see evidence of this, and become convinced of this, how eager might they be to submit to such leaders? The prospect of submitting to leadership drastically changes when you are persuaded that they aren’t pursuing their own private advantage but are genuinely seeking yours: what is best for you, what will give you the deepest and most enduring joy — when they find their joy in yours, rather than apart from or instead of yours.

The word submission has negative connotations today in many circles. But how might the charge to “submit” in Hebrews 13:17 and “be subject” in 1 Peter 5:5 change when we see it in the context of this vision of shepherding and oversight and pastoring as working for the joy of our people? There’s no charge to submit in verse 5 until verses 2–4 establish a context of “workers for your joy” who are willing, eager, and exemplary: they feed the flock, not themselves; they attend to the flock’s needs, not their own; they gain as the flock gains, not as the flock loses.

Have you ever considered what actions and initiatives and care are required in the New Testament, from husbands and fathers and governors and pastor-elders, before the charge is given to submit?

Husbands, love and be kind, not harsh (Colossians 3:19); then, wives, submit.
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger” (Ephesians 6:4), but to what? Joy! Gratitude! Then, children, submit.
Civil governors, be God’s servants for society’s good, avenging wrongdoing (Romans 13:1, 4; 1 Peter 2:13); then, citizens, submit.
Pastors, feed the flock through public teaching (1 Corinthians 14:34) and paying careful attention to (Acts 20:28) and keeping watch over (1 Timothy 4:16) the flock; then, flock, submit.

Godly pastor-elders give of themselves, their time, their energy, their attention, to work for the joy of the flock. Therefore, church, submit to your leaders. In Hebrews 13:17, negatively, God will hold the pastors accountable, and positively, it will be to your advantage, church, to your benefit, to your joy, if you let them labor with joy, for your joy, and not with groaning.

When we, as leaders in the church, show ourselves to be workers for their joy, we walk in the steps of the great shepherd — the great worker for our joy — the one who bore the greatest cost for others’ good, and not to the exclusion of his own joy. He found his joy in the joy of his Beloved. “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Or, in the words of Isaiah 53:11, “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”

As workers for the church’s joy, we pastors emphatically pursue gain — not shameful gain but the shameless gain that is our joy in the joy of the church, to the glory of Christ. Joy now, and joy in the coming shameless reward: “When the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4).

So, “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock,” and “not for shameful gain, but eagerly.” Now, finally . . .

3. Not Under Compulsion, but Willingly

Brothers, our churches want happy pastors. Not dutiful clergy. Not groaning ministers. The kind of pastors our people want are pastors who want to do the work, and labor with joy for their joy. They want pastors who serve “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have [them]” (1 Peter 5:2).

Did you hear that? Not just our people, but God himself wants pastors who labor willingly, from the heart, not under compulsion. He wants us to aspire to the work (1 Timothy 3:1), and do it with joy (Hebrews 13:17). Not dutifully, or under obligation, but willingly, eagerly, and happily.

And that phrase “as God would have you” does not mean that God requires something of us that is different from his own character and actions. “As God would have you” means “as God himself is” and does — literally, “according to God” (kata theon). Like God. Like he is and does — that’s how he likes it.

It says something about our God that he would have it this way. He is the infinitely happy “blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11) who acts from the boundless, immeasurable bliss of the eternal Godhead. He wants pastors to work with joy because he works with joy. He acts from fullness of joy. He is a God most glorified not by heartless duty, but by our eagerness and enjoyment, and he himself cares for his people willingly, eagerly, and happily.

Happy pastors and elders, not groaning pastors and elders, make for happy churches and a glorified Savior. Pastors who enjoy the work, and work with joy, are a benefit and an advantage to their people (Hebrews 13:17).

Two Ways Toward Joy

Let’s close this first session, then, with two practical manifestations of this vision. I have two suggestions, among others, for what it might mean for you, as pastors (or aspiring pastors), to be a worker with your people for their joy in Christ. One private, early morning one. One corporate, late-night one (at least “late-night” for our pastors, as we do our meetings every other Thursday night at 8:30, after our kids’ bedtimes).

There are countless implications of this vision, whether for discipling, or counseling, or your scheduling and calendar, or sermon prep, or husbanding and fathering, or sleep and exercise, and on and on. But let me start with just two. What does it look like for me to pursue my joy in the joy of our people (to the glory of God)?

1. Alone in the Morning

In the words of George Müller, my “first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day” is “to have my soul happy in the Lord.” My prayer is that this would land on you as not a burden but a blessing, not an obligation but an opportunity — not a have to as much as a get to. To feed on God, to get our souls happy in him, not with the accent on us but on him. He gives, we receive. He speaks, we listen. We come hungry, and he says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). We come thirsty, and he says, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1). Müller says,

The first thing to be concerned about [is] not how much I might serve the Lord [what I might do for others’ joy] . . . but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished.

How did he pursue this? Müller’s focus, in his words, was “the reading of the word of God and . . . meditation on it” — oh, the joys of unhurried, even leisurely, meditation on the words of God himself — “that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, while meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord.”

How did he go about approaching God’s word? He would meditate, he said, “searching, as it were, into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of public ministry of the word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul.”

2. Together as a Team

How often in our call to govern, to lead through prayer and collective wisdom and decision-making for the church, do we find two (or more) options lying before us?

This is a good moment to check ourselves. What is our framework for the decisions of leadership? It can be easy to slip into a selfish mindset: what is easiest, what’s most convenient for those of us sitting around the table. Without saying it, or thinking it explicitly, how might our preferences and comforts shape this church? How might church life be more convenient for us? Rather than asking, Which path, so far as we can tell, will be best for our people’s true joy in Christ?

But beware: when you ask a question like this, and answer in light of it, you find that the answer is often the path that is more costly to the pastors and elders. But this is the work to which we are called, as workers for their joy. If our team of pastors and elders trends toward the personal preferences and conveniences of the pastors and elders, then we are not loving our people well. We are not working with them for their joy. We are using them for ours.

But when we are “workers for their joy” — knowing that Christ is most glorified in his church when his church is most satisfied in him — then, from joy, we set aside our own convenience and personal preferences, and together we labor for the joy of our people in Jesus.

The sky was the kind of blue if blue could burn, blue on fire, lit by the sun blazing high above the hills in winter on a morning when there are no clouds. A sky like that makes it easier for a soldier to die. It’s the last thing he sees, and there is comfort in knowing some things will live forever. (The Well-Spoken Thesaurus, 16)

Have you ever seen a sky like this? A sky ablaze and serene, reaching down to dying men with the warmth of a mother’s arms or the caress of a wife’s hand? This sky, burning blue, eases the soldier’s passing. He is dying — he knows the wound. Among thoughts of loves lost, future days unlived, last words never spoken, he gazes up, and there, a painting more beautiful than he ever remembers. What a Sistine Chapel to canvas this theater of war — unsmeared, unshot. Beauty amidst death. Loveliness amidst terror. A flower sprouts in a bloody field. As his eyes begin to stare beyond this world, he almost smiles.

A sky like that makes it easier for a soldier to die.

This world has many such skies, skies (figuratively speaking) that make it easier for us to face death. They seem to say, in their own way, Everything is going to be alright. But earth’s burning skies do not always (or even often) tell the truth. As much as they may quiet the conscience at the end of a life we thought well-lived, we may still, in fact, be unprepared to die. Then, such skies deceive like a decorated hallway on our way to a place we never meant to go. Men, women, and children have slipped into death with a degree of consolation, only to awake in confusion. They died under the comfort of a burning blue sky that gave way to a living nightmare.

If our soldier could have heard the speech of the sky that day, he would have heard a fiery sermon about the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). A sermon rebuking his thankless and dishonoring life toward his Creator (Romans 1:20–21). A sermon pleading with him to turn from sin to a faithful God who remembers his own with mercy (Jeremiah 31:34–37). The sky burned blue-faced, yes, with earnest appeals: “Confess your sins; look to the perfect sacrifice — Jesus Christ — who died under a skyless night that sinners might wake to eternal Day. Trust in him completely, before you lose your soul forever!”

Earth’s Best Skies

Reader, do you know what sky would ease your death, if death came sooner rather than later? Is it trustworthy? Let us turn our gaze to some of the most vivid skies earth contains, skies that, apart from Christ, will cheat us in the end — the true, the good, the beautiful. These firmaments put man in touch with something beyond himself. Yet we can die beneath these heavenlies without being welcomed into heaven.

The True

Many men have died under the serene skies of a thoughtful life. They have wondered and thus wandered beyond the maze of carnal stupidity. They will not die as a cow eating grass. They are men, not beasts. They agree that the unexamined life is not worth living. They believe in true and false; they believe in logic and mathematics and science and philosophy, and even that a higher power must reign above.

Such men ask hard questions and cannot be satisfied with shallow answers. They read and listen and converse and challenge and will follow where the evidence leads. They think and test their thoughts. What they believe, they know, and what they know can correspond very well with God’s reality. They answer some questions correctly. They do not bow to Jesus as the Truth — they too have exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and for this they shall perish — but they stand more approximate to truth than their unthinking, unserious, uninterested, and easily distractable peers. To trap them, Satan must at least use the good cheese.

When they come to die, they recognize that they die in a nest perched on a higher branch. They have read better books, dined on better thoughts, lived more efficiently, productively, rationally, humanely. Worldly wisdom, perhaps, but better than worldly idiocy. They die under a sky of thought, yet never fearing the happy prayer of Jesus:

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. (Luke 10:21)

The Good

Another brilliant sky is the virtuous one. The great Village of Morality boasts the most captivating atmospheres for sons of Adam to die beneath. Creeds and religions of all sorts coexist under these colors and pat themselves on the back till death.

These feed the conscience memories of goodness, offer their doubts the wine of good works — You weren’t perfect, but you did your best. They despised the pellets and dirty water left in the hamster wheel; they never ran after those lusts. They have learned some version of decency, civility, discipline, which, at points, overlapped with the right, agreed with conscience, acted in accordance with God’s law.

Such a man believes that without morality, he is no better than the dog he pets or the worm he puts on the hook. He may not get it all right, but he cannot live without attempting goodness. Reading C.S. Lewis, he cries amen:

The man without a moral code, like the animal, is free from moral problems. The man who has not learned to count is free from mathematical problems. A man asleep is free from all problems. Within the framework of general human ethics problems will, of course, arise and will sometimes be resolved wrongly. This possibility of error is simply the symptom that we are awake, not asleep, that we are men, not beasts or gods. (Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, 313)

Such may conserve traditional ideals of right and wrong, may warmly embrace sanity and live in friendship with natural law, may still know the meaning of duty and honor, and thus sicken at the decadence of a culture bartering Christian constraints for pagan perversions.

“Faith in the Son — dwelling in him and under his blood — is the only safe sky for mankind.”

But still, they themselves do not follow Christ. Yes, obviously boys are boys and girls are girls. Yes, of course murdering children is an abomination ladled from the bottom of the pit of hell. Yes, our government should end its war on the natural family. But no, I personally don’t worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of my life.

This is a pretty sky, prettier than the drab and polluted grey of the demonic ideologies of the time, but an unsafe sky to die beneath nonetheless.

The Beautiful

Overlapping with the first two, the beautiful is “an intrinsic quality of things which, when perceived, pleases the mind by displaying a certain kind of fittingness” (Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord, 9). As paint in the right place and proportion gives us a lovely painting, and as music in the fitting keys and proper sequence soothes the ear, so a life well-proportioned, bright with varying colors, gives off a sort of beauty, even if unredeemed.

Such lives unveil a father worth imitating, a friendship we want, a great romance we envy. They pursue high ideals; they live, in some sense, for others. This initially pleasing (but Christless) life fills the world’s novels, television series, plays, and movies. It is the beauty of the human experience: The replaying of moments — special and common — that make this life worth living. The beautiful contours of the human story that we relate to, know, and can glimpse as inexplicably precious. Our story — filled with tragedy and triumph, family and failure, music and misery — is still authored in pleasing font, still valuable.

And if we can look back at the four seasons of life and see love, or at the faces surrounding our deathbed and see it returned in their tears, this can soothe the sting of death as it overwhelms us. The burning blue sky is the wife’s hand or the memory of a beloved mother you hope to see again.

This compelling aesthetic is the hope of many. She is a smiling sky, a beautiful expectation. Yet while it imitates the second great commandment (loving your neighbor as yourself), it doesn’t pretend to attempt the first (loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength). The loveliness toward man is spoiled by the heart’s unloveliness toward God. The “love” is seen as idolatry in the end, a pleasing mural painted on a rotting house. More unjust is this love than a man who adores his dog and neglects his wife, or the woman who feeds her cat and starves her grandmother. Lightning will soon erupt from this clear sky.

Parting Clouds

Christ, dear reader, Jesus Christ. All loves inevitably fall and die and decay while we still serve the world, the flesh, and the devil. No matter what sky makes it easier for us to die, faith in the Son — dwelling in him and under his blood — is the only safe sky for mankind. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).

All truth is found in him — “I am . . . the truth” (John 14:6). All goodness is his, and he is “the righteous one” (Isaiah 53:11). All shafts of beauty beam from his crown to earth — “He is the radiance of the glory of God,” “the king in his beauty” (Hebrews 1:3; Isaiah 33:17). Apart from him, this world’s best truths, highest goodness, and most suggestive splendors spoil, fester, and stink. The corpse, though embalmed, decays, smells, and returns to dust.

But what a sky, burning blue and gold and silver, is Christ to the soul. Gaze up, as Stephen in his death, and prize not the horizon for its colors, but heaven for its Christ. “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Look to him — as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty himself — and die looking to him. He is the only sky that makes it not only easier to die, but far better.

Some call it “the beauty bias.” Others prefer “lookism.” Either way, several studies over the last couple of decades establish the point apparently beyond dispute: It pays to be beautiful. Literally.

The more physically attractive you are, the more likely you will get interviews and job offers, receive raises, and obtain loan approvals, even if others alongside you are just as qualified. On some subconscious level (that hazy realm where bias lurks), we lean toward the beautiful. We favor the fair. We show partiality to the pretty and the handsome — financially, yes, and also in many other ways.

But we didn’t really need studies to tell us that, did we? From ancient times, the wise have warned against our proneness to get stuck on the surface, to prize skin over substance. The danger may be more acute for men, and particularly younger men, single or married. We are visual creatures, we younger men, with many of us still learning just how deceitful charm can be, and just how vain its beauty (Proverbs 31:30). Wisdom adds depth to a man’s vision, but wisdom also takes time.

To help speed the process, the book of Proverbs comes alongside young men and makes a daring move. Consider, it says, “a beautiful woman without discretion” (Proverbs 11:22). Fair outwardly, foolish inwardly, she has caught many a man’s eyes — and kept most eyes on the surface. She shines like silver, glitters like gold.

But now, Proverbs says, step back and take a better look. Notice that her golden beauty is part of something bigger: “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.”

Gold Rings and Monstrous Pigs

If such an image startles you, good. It’s meant to. The pig’s nose ring is supposed to disturb us into a different way of seeing. Whereas we might typically call a foolish beauty “a little disappointing,” Derek Kidner goes so far as to say, “Scripture sees her as a monstrosity” (Proverbs, 88). As long as physical beauty masks inward folly, it amounts to a swinish jewel, a piggish pearl, a golden snout decoration.

The image startles, in part, because God really did wire us to see and appreciate outward loveliness. In itself, beauty is no evil. God created a world of splendor, after all, and human attractiveness often taps into created principles of harmony, symmetry, and balance we can’t help but notice.

Nor does Scripture hesitate to mention the beauty of the beautiful — to note that “Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance” (Genesis 29:17), or that Abigail “was discerning and beautiful” (1 Samuel 25:3), or that David “was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome” (1 Samuel 16:12). These beauties, and so many more, glimmer with the glory of their Maker, whom Augustine called the “Beauty of all things beautiful” (Confessions, 3.6.10; see Psalm 27:4; Isaiah 33:17).

In God’s ideal design, outward beauty illustrates inward dignity — and in many cases, beauty today still functions that way. And yet, in this fallen age, where “the lust of the eyes” often governs our vision (1 John 2:16 NASB), and where outward splendor often hides a heart opposed to God, Scripture warns against trusting our vision too quickly. Some of the brightest beauty tells a lie; some gold rings hang from pig snouts. And alternatively, some of the deepest beauty hides from men of superficial sight. As a wise mother tells us later in Proverbs,

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,     but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. (Proverbs 31:30)

The verse holds a world of wisdom for young men. Here, single men learn to discern the kind of woman worth pursuing (and the kind of woman to hide their eyes from) — and married men learn to see their wives with a depth only wisdom can give.

Vain, Deceitful Beauty

On the surface, Proverbs 31:30 puzzles a little. “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain” — the judgment against outward attractiveness seems sweeping. But Scripture appreciates outward beauty elsewhere (as we’ve seen), and even in Proverbs our young man is told to rejoice in his “graceful” wife (Proverbs 5:19), which translates the same word for “charm” in Proverbs 31:30. So, what kind of charm deceives, and what kind should we rejoice over? What kind of beauty is vain, and what kind should we admire?

First, Proverbs would have us beware of any supposed charm, and any vaunted beauty, that does not fear the Lord. If a woman’s charm doesn’t submit to Christ, and if her beauty doesn’t quietly boast in God, then her highest attractions become hollow. They draw eyes downward, not upward. They betray the God who gave them.

More specifically, charm becomes “deceitful” without godly fear. The word often refers to verbal lies. In this case, the deceit is visual rather than audible: men who chase mere charm, without caring whether it leads toward God or away, are in the grip of a lie. Likewise, beauty becomes “vain” without godly fear. The same word blows through Ecclesiastes like a swift wind, suggesting that beauty’s vanity lies largely in its brevity. “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field” (Isaiah 40:6): here today, gone tomorrow; smooth today, wrinkled tomorrow; blond today, gray tomorrow. Those who grasp for beauty, without loving beauty’s God, are trying to bottle the breeze.

Second, although Proverbs 31:30 contrasts charm and beauty with “a woman who fears the Lord,” such a woman will not be charmless, at least not to a godly man. Not only is a God-fearing young man meant to find his wife charming (Proverbs 5:19), but even the Proverbs 31 woman has a kind of radiance. “Strength and dignity are her clothing,” we read (Proverbs 31:25), with the word for “dignity” often rendered as “splendor” or “majesty” elsewhere (Psalm 21:5; Isaiah 2:10; 35:2).

The godly woman’s charm and beauty differ, however, from what worldly eyes expect. Whereas discretion-less beauty often dresses to be seen, godly beauty is often a secret splendor, a quiet glory. It may not immediately catch eyes. But the more our vision becomes like God’s, the more we will turn away from the flaunted beauty of this fallen age and prize the beauty that cannot wrinkle, shrivel, or gray.

Beauty Soul Deep

If foolish men fix their gaze only on the surface, the path to wisdom begins by looking deeper, past a woman’s skin to her soul. Here, in the soul, lies the true excellence of “an excellent” woman (Proverbs 31:10). Here is a jewel that age cannot tarnish, a crown that time cannot take, a splendor the grave cannot steal.

Of course, seeing soul beauty takes time and attention; it does not shine as obviously as fair skin. But shine it does for men patient enough to observe. The Proverbs 31 woman is beautiful, but her beauty shows best in what she does, not how she looks. While the gold-ring-pig-snout woman agonizes over her appearance, this woman works hard, even sacrificing perfect nails in the process (verses 13, 16). She applies godly skill to both her household and the marketplace (verses 18, 21, 24). She hands gifts to the poor and wisdom to her children (verses 20, 26). She fears the Lord (verse 30).

Perhaps, like Abigail, she both fears the Lord and attracts the eye (1 Samuel 25:3). Or perhaps her physical beauty is muted. Either way, the godly man who watches her sees a splendor slowly rising, beauty deep as a well and strong as an underground river. Fools pass by her quickly, chasing gold-ring glitter (and missing the pig). But to a man with eyes to see her, she will seem like “a lovely deer, a graceful doe” (Proverbs 5:19).

I don’t mean to imply that a godly man should find any and every godly woman romantically attractive. Holiness does not make us blind to physical beauty, and physical beauty plays a real (if complex) role in our attractions. But if we belong to Jesus, we know what it feels like to find beauty where others see none. “He had . . . no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2), but oh, how beautiful he was (Isaiah 52:7)! How sad, then, if we who have been captured by the unexpected glory of Christ should look no deeper than the surface.

Greater beauty lies beneath. And surprisingly, wonderfully, those who behold such beauty often find that it casts a glow on everything else.

Skin Transfigured

The more a godly husband knows his godly wife, the more he realizes that her outward appearance doesn’t remain fixed, nor does her inward beauty stay inward. Over time, the splendor of her soul spills through the cracks of her skin like the light of a lantern. And the two beauties, the inner and the outer, begin to merge and play.

Proverbs leads us to expect as much. How else can we understand the father’s command to “rejoice in the wife of your youth,” delighting in her body “at all times” and “always” (Proverbs 5:18–19)? When the wife of your youth is no longer youthful, her heart still holds its beauty, and her body still holds her heart. Decades past the marriage vows, her gray hair is no garland of ashes, the burnt remains of her former beauty. Rather, her gray hair sits upon her head as “a crown of glory” (Proverbs 16:31), at least to the man who knows her as queen. Her soul transfigures her skin.

This attentive, patient vision, this gaze that dives into a woman’s depths and brings treasures back to the surface, is nothing less than a participation in God’s own sight. “The Lord sees not as man sees” (1 Samuel 16:7). “The hidden person of the heart” is his pleasure; “the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” his delight (1 Peter 3:4). And we men — husbands and fathers, brothers and sons — have the privilege of telling the true story of beauty in this age obsessed with skin.

The world tells women a lie about beauty. Our wives and daughters, sisters and mothers hear in a thousand ways that true beauty rests on the surface. They are told to become gold rings and not to care whether a pig wears them or not. And we men can either endorse that lie or renounce it. We can show partiality to the pretty among us. We can refuse to consider as a marriage partner any woman who doesn’t fit our precise type (assuming, along the way, that our desires are fixed rather than flexible). We can hint a subtle displeasure in a wife’s changing appearance. Or we can rise up with the Proverbs 31 man and praise not charm, not mere outward beauty, but the kind of “woman who fears the Lord” (Proverbs 31:30).

Such a man becomes a herald of the coming age, a forerunner who anticipates the day when every righteous woman “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of [her] Father” (Matthew 13:43) — and when her body will perfectly match the Christlike splendor of her heart.