Truth (Jesus Christ), in short, doesn’t just give us new life, a second birth; it also shepherds that new life. It makes us grow and change over days, months, years, and decades.

Learning is a matter of taking small steps forward, but then backing up so that you can take a bigger jump, clearing the mark of your previous understanding. We go forward so that we can go back to go forward again. I’ve been thinking about this with what I’ve learned about truth, for instance. I first learned that truth was a standard, a quality I could give to something or someone else—small steps forward. But then I read about how Jesus is the truth (John 14:6). I had to backpedal. “So, hold on…truth isn’t just a standard?”—backing up. “But then that means knowing the truth is really a relationship!”—the bigger jump. Learning is beautiful, isn’t it? Not just the end goal, but the whole process, the forward-back-forward.
I was reminded of this when I came across the following lines from Vern Poythress’s Truth, Theology, and Perspective (p. 108).
For any human being, redemption requires something more than that the human being know facts about God. There is guilt, liability, and demerit, which weigh us down and which have to be dealt with. We have to face the punishment of death, which, without redemption, will come in our future if God does not undertake to redeem us from the punishment. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). We need God to save us. We need a man to be united to us, to substitute for us, and to bring us out of our misery. Our savior must be God, in order to have the power to save us. He must also become man, in order to substitute for us as our sin bearer. In addition, we need to be born again, to become a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).
The relation of these lines to truth may not be obvious. But look where the passage begins: redemption involves more than knowing facts about God. Don’t we often assume that there is a direct or even exclusive correlation between facts and redemption, as if knowing more about God is equivalent to becoming more like God? Is that how truth works? Is redemption mostly a matter of learning about God, that forward-back-forward movement that happens inside the walls of your brain?
Truth Runs Deep
Of course, redemption involves learning, as does salvation. We need to hear the truth about God in order to receive it (Rom. 10:14–15). But the mysterious reality that truth is ultimately a person (John 14:6) and not a principle means that learning more about God isn’t enough. Redemption is learning into God. It’s growing into the Christ-shape he has for each of us.
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Written by Justin E. Estrada |
Monday, January 16, 2023
Representatives from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9), will open the door so that Jesus might come in to them and eat with them, and they with Him (Revelation 3:20), anticipating that final meal of covenantal peace at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6–8), when Jesus will usher in the new heavens and the new earth, void of brokenness, curse, and want, full of shalom, forevermore.

It was a blustery English day, and—a little late, a lot wet—I hurried into my professor’s office for my Hebrew tutorial. Embarrassed, I offered a cordial but rushed Hebrew greeting, “Shalom.” He watched quietly as I took out materials for our lesson, and then responded: “Justin, shalom is more than a simple hello; it declares the health of our relationship. Draw out the vowels, give the word weight, because we have peace, and that’s no small thing.” It was a kind method of restoration and instruction: we could proceed in peace—he even offered tea and biscuits.
In a world racked with strife, it may seem obvious to declare peace “no small thing”; but the biblical understanding of peace—the word shalom in Hebrew, translated into Greek as eirn—involves much more than the absence of conflict. Shalom expresses wholeness, blessing, and completeness, exemplified by the perfection of God’s creation and the unimpaired, harmonious relationships of God with His creatures and His creatures among themselves. God speaks shalom into existence (Isa. 45:7), and the entirety of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, chronicles His intention to restore it to fallen humanity, that the word issued from His mouth—shalom—might not return to Him empty but accomplish His purpose of peace, blessing, and wholeness.
In the beginning, the God of shalom, perfect in wholeness, blessing, and completeness among His three persons, creates all things in six days, all very good. Creation resembles its Creator, and He invites it to share in His peace—particularly man, whom He makes in His image. He gives Adam a helpmate to complete him, a garden with every good thing to eat, and a purpose to multiply and take dominion of creation so that he might be whole. It is a state of shalom, and you can almost hear the jubilant greetings of “peace be with you” as the Lord descends from His cosmic throne to walk in peace with Adam and Eve through the garden.
Unexpectedly, a frightening scene transpires one day: God’s arrival in the garden for fellowship goes ungreeted. Shalom has been broken through man’s transgression. Adam now fears nakedness as incompleteness; he accuses his wife of harming him rather than making him whole; and he finds the fruit a curse rather than a blessing. Adam and Eve flee and hide, trembling at the expectation of judgment rather than peace (Gen. 3:8–11).
In the face of this misery, God speaks remarkable words of shalom to them. Little wonder that Paul describes the peace of God as passing all understanding (Phil. 4:7); in the midst of judgment against rebellion, God comforts His children with the promise of peace through One who would crush the head of the lying, murderous serpent (Gen. 3:14–15). Man’s sin has turned them away, their fallen condition corrupting harmony into hostility—vividly represented in the exile—but God is determined to bless them through this Seed of the woman and to restore to Himself a remnant—vividly represented by the sacrifice that produces garments to cover nakedness.
God’s pronouncements at the sudden shattering of shalom portend a slow, costly restoration—but nothing will overturn His irenic purposes. Fallen humanity undermines creation’s harmony, but God intervenes (against all reasonable expectation), and His judgments carry forward His program of peace. The flood cleanses a world ailing under a decaying moral order (Gen. 6–9), and the scattering from the Tower of Babel reignites the creation mandate (Gen. 11:1–9). In an aimless world, God plucks up a displaced wanderer, Abraham—bereft of family and home—and gifts him with wholeness: divine fellowship and a son to his barren wife. This restoration of shalom in Abraham is not an end in itself, but an illustration and a means by which God will restore shalom to all the nations through his offspring—the Seed of the woman who will descend from the great nation of Abraham’s descendants (see Gen. 12:1–3; Gal. 3:15–18).
This great nation, Israel, emerges only after a long travail in virtual death in Egypt, for like father Abraham, they will serve as an example and means toward shalom. Their slavery results from the unwholesome curse, their deliverance from God’s power: through Israel all nations will know this. On eagles’ wings He brings them to Mount Sinai, formalizing with them a covenantal relationship of and unto peace, expressed by an invitation for the representatives of Israel to “see” Him and feast with Him without fear (Ex. 24:9–11). He sets a blessed precedent rehearsed regularly in Israel through the peace offering—a sacrifice and feast of covenantal solidarity (Lev. 3:1–17)—as well as through the Aaronic congregational benediction of shalom (Num. 6:24–26).
On the whole, God’s covenantal people fail to live under and testify to His program of shalom. He instructs them with His peacemaking characteristics through the Mosaic law, and the sacrificial system illuminates His plan to overcome death, but the Old Testament church time and again shatters shalom by preferring fellowship with false gods and peace with the enemies of God (see Num. 25:1–2). Even David, inheritor of God’s covenantal promises, flees from God into the arms of sin (2 Sam. 11), and his son Solomon—whose name means “peace”—leads all Israel in apostasy and establishes a pattern of sin that ultimately provokes God’s judgment against His people. As the crescendo of sin rises to mute God’s warnings against this Edenesque cycle of destruction, the false prophets preach “ ‘peace,’ when there is no peace” (Ezek. 13:10), and God again sends His people—first Israel, then Judah—into exilic judgment.
By this point, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that even at the exilic breaking of shalom, God speaks words of comfort. Israel has broken shalom and misled the nations, raising the question, When will the Messiah, the Seed of the woman, come and finally establish true shalom? When will the Prince of shalom usher in a new covenant era (Isa. 9), instituting a permanent realm of peace (Isa. 11)? When will God’s people “seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:14) and all the nations come together in this glorious place of rest (Isa. 11:10)?
All spheres of creation give answer to this question at the birth of the incarnated Son of God, Jesus. Zechariah declares that He will “guide our feet into the way of peace”; the angels extol His arrival as “peace among those with whom [God] is pleased!” (Luke 1:79; 2:14). Expectations of the Seed of the woman are not disappointed: what a kingdom of shalom! Jesus addresses physical and spiritual malady alike, proclaiming “liberty to the captives . . . blind . . . [and] oppressed” (Isa. 61:1; Luke 4:18). Perhaps nothing identifies Jesus as Prince of Peace more than when He establishes His new covenant of peace with representatives of the New Testament church—the Apostles. He offers food and drink in everlasting fellowship, the bread and wine representing His very body and blood, the means by which His words will take effect: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). At the crucifixion, God speaks shalom in its final utterance, for Jesus “was pierced for our transgressions; . . . upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). This pouring out of God’s wrath against sin becomes another flood of cleansing: a river of shalom pouring out from Jesus’ side, the atoning blood of the cross reconciling those for whom He died to their Father in heaven, restoring to them wholeness, completeness, and blessing (see Isa. 66:12; Col. 1:20).
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The process of compiling an anthology of devotional classics was for me a continuous process of tracking down bits and pieces that were part of my literary and religious life that I had never pursued in detail. I will feel rewarded if my readers come to love the entries in my anthology as I have come to love them, and I will be doubly rewarded if my readers catch a vision for finding devotional riches in overlooked corners of their own reading lives.

The Devoted Heart
The following reflections on the devoted heart are occasioned by the recent release of my anthology of devotional classics, a book in which each devotional text is accompanied by a 500-word explication by me. I called the texts classics to denote that they possess qualities that raise them above the conventional entries in a daily devotional guide. The problems with the conventional devotional guide are multiple, as Charles Spurgeon discovered when he made a survey of existing devotional books. What Spurgeon found was predictability, monotony, a tendency toward abstraction, and lack of fresh insight and expression.
In compiling my anthology, I worked hard to find devotional riches in unexpected places. Many of the authors would doubtless be surprised by what I chose for devotional purposes. Although I did not primarily go in quest of superior expression, I found that freshness of insight and expression just naturally appeared, often because of the real-life situations from which the devotionals arose.

I will adduce four examples to illustrate what I am describing, and then I will explore the common ingredients that the selections in my book share, in effect offering a definition of the genre of a devotional classic.

Devotional Riches in Unexpected Places
The burial service in The Book of Common Prayer was not composed as a devotional. It was instead intended to be part of a funeral service. Yet it is a moving meditation on human mortality and immortality. Here is a brief excerpt:
In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for help, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased? . . . O holy and most merciful Savior, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death . . . [and] suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee.
When Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson was walking with a visitor in a garden, the visitor asked the poet what he thought of Christ. Tennyson’s response was not offered as a devotional, but it nonetheless rises to that status: “What the sun is to that flower, Jesus Christ is to my soul. He is the sun of my soul.”
William Shakespeare finalized and signed his will a month before his death in 1616. In doing so, he did not envision himself as writing something devotional, yet part of the preamble reads as follows: “I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior to be made partaker of life everlasting. And my body to the earth whereof it is made.”
Painter Lilias Trotter made a practice of drawing plants in Algeria, where she served as a missionary in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Trotter pondered the plants that she came to know intimately, the idea occurred to her that they were parables of spiritual truths. One of these parables was built around the idea that just as plants die and then revive to new life, for people, too, death is in multiple ways the gate of life. Here is a brief excerpt: “A gateway is never a dwelling-place; the death-stage is never meant for our souls to stay and brood over, but to pass through with a will into the light beyond . . . for above all and through all is the inflowing, overflowing life of Jesus.”
A Devoted Life is the Seedbed of a Devoted Heart
Before I turn to an analysis of the common ingredients of the genre of a classical devotional, I will pause to draw a conclusion from the examples I have just quoted.
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