I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” (Psalm 16:2)

In Psalm 16, David is taking refuge in God. Taking refuge includes David’s prayer for God to keep him. In other words, the prayer “preserve me” (Psalm 16:1) is itself a taking refuge in God. But David doesn’t simply ask God to keep him. He also speaks and declares truth to God. He exults in Yahweh his refuge (Psalm 16:2).

The last phrase of verse 2 is packed with deep theological truth and precious fuel for worship. So, what does David mean when he says, “I have no good apart from you”?

God is the source of all goodness.

Every good that is good comes from the God who is Good. God is the maker and sustainer of all created goods. Thus, in Genesis 1, he creates and then appraises his work: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

“Every good that is good comes from the God who is Good.”

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), the brilliant medieval theologian, saw in this truth compelling evidence for God’s existence. He noted that everyone agrees there is a great variety of goods in the world. There are physical goods, intellectual goods, relational goods. This is a basic fact of reality. From this fact, Anselm asks, “What makes all of the good things good?” And he concludes that the good things are not independently good. They are not good by themselves. Rather, there must be some ultimate good that makes all the other things good.

In other words, Anselm reasoned there must be a supreme good that is the source of all other goodness. In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of David in Psalm 16. David confesses that there is a Supreme Good that makes all other goods good. And Yahweh is this Supreme Good. Or, as David prays elsewhere, God is my “exceeding joy” — literally, “the joy of joys” (Psalm 43:4). David knows his refuge is the foundational joy on which all other joys are built.

God’s goodness is unique.

All created goods are finite, temporal, and changing. But God is infinite, eternal, and unchanging. The apostle James celebrates this fact: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).

Created goods cast shadows. As good as they are, they are not infinite goods. They are limited, and they fade. But God has no shadow, and he does not change. His goodness is without boundary or limit. His is an absolute and essential goodness.

God is goodness itself.

God’s perfections aren’t just qualities that he happens to have. They are essential to him. They are our human descriptions of his being, his essence, his nature, his very God-ness. This is what it means for God to be holy. His attributes are utterly perfect and wholly distinct from the derivative, dependent attributes of his creatures.

We call a man righteous because he meets the standard of righteousness. We call a man wise because he conforms to the pattern of wisdom. But God is the standard. He is the pattern. He is not merely righteous; he is righteousness itself. He is not merely wise; he is wisdom itself. He is not merely strong; he is strength itself. And he is not merely good; he is goodness itself. Or again, the Lord is not merely righteous, wise, strong, and good. He is the Righteous, the Wise, the Strong, and the Good.

This is what it means for God to be God, for God to be Yahweh, I Am Who I Am. This is why Jesus can say, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). He is the fountain of all goodness, the source and origin of all pleasure and joy. He is infinite, eternal, unchanging, inexhaustible, self-sufficient and all-sufficient, without limit or diminishment.

God has no need of my goodness.

Because God is the source of all goodness, my goodness does not benefit God in any way. He is above all need and all improvement. As Paul says, “God . . . does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24–25).

“The Lord is all-sufficient, and it is because he is all-sufficient that he can be sufficient for me.”

David in this psalm revels in the fact that he has nothing to offer God but his poverty, his weakness, his need. He has no gift to give to God that he might be repaid. The Lord is all-sufficient, and it is because he is all-sufficient that he can be sufficient for me. It is because he has no needs that he can meet mine. It is because he is the Supreme Good that I can take refuge in him.

Drops and the Ocean

Finally, don’t miss the fact that these weighty theological truths are deeply personal for David. David doesn’t merely confess that Yahweh is the Lord; he says, “You are my Lord.” What wonders are embedded in that little possessive pronoun. The infinite and eternal fountain of goodness somehow, some way belongs to me. In his infinite all-sufficiency, he condescends and allows me to call him “mine.” My Lord, my Master, my King.

And this means that God is not merely the ultimate and supreme Good. He is my Good. And for him to be my highest good is for him to be my greatest pleasure. My ultimate well-being and happiness are found in him and him alone. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) expressed this glorious truth as well as anyone else in his sermon “The True Christian’s Life a Journey Towards Heaven”:

God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper happiness, and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here: better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean. (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 17:437–38)

Can a man really be truly alive who has forgotten how to weep? Can a man of God, or a minister of Christ, truly claim to be fully awake without tears? These are questions, uncomfortable questions, I have been asking myself.

These considerations, dry as my eyes have been, do not originate with me. I consider them somewhat reluctantly. I had studied (and even memorized) the parting speech from Paul to the Ephesian elders before I beheld the apostle’s wet face.

Paul, anchored briefly on the seacoast of Miletus, sends a message forty miles south to Ephesus. He bids the elders come immediately. When they arrive, he tells them what breaks their hearts: “Now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again” (Acts 20:25, 37–38). Paul was resolved to board a ship sailing into dark providences. “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me” (Acts 20:22–23).

“Can a man really be truly alive who has forgotten how to weep?”

Three years he had spent with them in Ephesus, tending their souls “day and night.” This is their last meeting in this life. His words fell as bricks of gold. Of all the things to say and recall, to encourage and to warn, with so few characters left to compose his final message, are you surprised that Paul mentions twice, of all things, his tears?

Serve the Lord with Tears

He begins his final words to these dear friends,

You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews. (Acts 20:18–19)

Paul mentions his crying as a matter of fact — you yourselves know. The Ephesian elders remembered how the dew of his affections fell unashamedly. They saw him cry the “whole time” he lived among them. What an oft neglected picture of the mighty apostle.

If I could, I would try and paint it, entitled, “The Lord’s Lion, Crying.” It is good for me to see this. Paul, in his ministry, lost composure at times. At times — and it appears at many times — his passion for Christ and his pity for souls undid his seeming poise. “Do you remember my tears?” he asks these now elders of the church. Can you see those gracious rains watering my sermons, indeed, those sermon exclamation points from my soul to yours, servants of your eternal good and my gracious Lord?

The scene causes me to ask, Do I serve the Lord with such tears? Do I even want to? Do you?

Warnings Through the Blur

When Paul mentions his tears the second time, he says more. After telling the men to pay careful attention to themselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit made them overseers, he tells them that vicious wolves will attack from without, and false teachers will creep up from within (Acts 20:29–30) — stay alert, he pleads. But notice what accompanies his appeal:

Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. (Acts 20:31)

“Admonish” means to warn. For three years he did not stop warning them, or weeping for them. What a sight. What a perplexity. Ponder this weeping warrior with me.

This man of industry and blood-earnestness warns them of sin and judgment and the wrath to come — while he weeps warm tears over their souls. As a sentinel, he held up his hands and declared himself free of their blood. He tells them twice he did not shrink back in cowardice from telling them all of God’s truth. He said the hard and unpopular word; he warned and called sin what it is. People did not like what he said — in fact, they were trying to kill him.

Still this soldier wept while warning: Turn from your ruin, flee from the coming wrath, repent toward God and place all of your faith in Jesus Christ! Believe in the good news of the grace of God. Keep believing in the crucified — now risen and soon returning — Christ!

Power of Tearful Pleading

Imagine standing across from such a man.

Your fallen heart has often been on its guard against arguments and criticisms. Your armor is well-clad, and your sin is well-protected. Heartless disputes and playing with words is your sport. But who is this foe striking from horseback? What kind of warrior sheds tears for the man he wishes to conquer? Steel meeting cold steel — this is the battlefield’s familiar soundtrack. Grunts and yells and trumpet blasts you relish, but not these soft and unnerving cries from the enemy — tears for you. This is more than mere truth; it’s love.

You see his redness of eye. You hear the arresting stoppings and startings in his speech. Here is no enemy, no hired hand, no mere debater of this age. He is earnest, to be sure, but earnest for more than an argument. He’s earnest for souls — my soul. He may discard my opinions, yet he bears me upon his heart. He tells me hard things but seems to want good for me. Perhaps more than I want for myself.

Admonitions for Two Men

What a corrective to both tearless stridency and weepy willows today — to the ones like me who have taught on the lake of fire while seldom shedding a tear beside it, and to those crying who would never dare mention hell.

“What a nuisance warnings can become when given without this holy moisture. All lightening, no rain.”

What a nuisance warnings can become when given without this holy moisture. All lightening, no rain. Such repeated scolding gives off dry, hot air and leaves hearts cracked. Bellowings Paul knew too well, “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). In his now-wet eyes, the tearless can find hope that grace may not be done with us just yet.

But neither can we long tolerate the convictionless crier, whose tears have no deep well. Men ever on the verge of crying over trifles need reminding that they should quit themselves like men and be strong. Good tears serve a higher ambition. They serve the Lord Jesus. But above these rise the cries in Ephesus. How that weeping earnestness confounded sinners as Paul pled with the dead to turn and live. The Lord’s Lion — Crying, Warning, Pleading.

Such a one — I am only left to imagine — was hard to argue with for long, and even harder to forget. When is the last time, dear Christian reader, you warned a faithless brother, an apostate mother, a lustful son, a deceived friend through blurred vision?

Should not the truly living, in such a world as this, find times to weep? Do not many live despising mercy and rejecting Christ? Are not souls lost to that eternal place of gnashing and weeping every hour — our friends, classmates, and neighbors — many not knowing a Christian who shed a single tear over their souls? We come with glad tidings; we need not always cry. But is our danger too much tearful pleas for souls?

Weep into Their Souls

A final word, then, for fellow pastor-elders, men like those Paul spoke to that day. Do you have a tear to shed for the lost sinner and threatened saint? Do you serve your Lord with tears? I do not pretend to instruct you in these matters. These are but my sermon notes as I overhear the weeping lion.

Charles Spurgeon said it was a blessed thing for a minister to “weep his way into men’s souls,” a quality he had admired in George Whitefield.

Hear how Whitefield preached, and never dare to be lethargic again. [Cornelius] Winter says of him that “sometimes he exceedingly wept, and was frequently so overcome, that for a few seconds you would suspect he never would recover; and when he did, nature required some little time to compose herself. I hardly ever knew him go through a sermon without weeping more or less. His voice was often interrupted by his affections; and I have heard him say in the pulpit, ‘You blame me for weeping; but how can I help it, when you will not weep for yourselves, although your own immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and, for aught I know, you are, hearing your last sermon, and may never more have an opportunity to have Christ, offered to you?’” (Lectures to My Students, 307)

Let us all pray for holy tears. Not for their own sake, not to make a vain show that draws attention to ourselves, or tries to manipulate. But let us seek life, full life, abundant life in Christ — a life fully alive, fully awake, fully compassionate within a cursed world of evil times and immortal souls. Lord, raise a generation of lionhearted men and women for Christ who serve you with all their hearts and minds and souls and strength — and tears.

Audio Transcript

Does holy anger kill our delight in God? It’s a good question from Matt, a listener in Wisconsin. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast! I think we are living in an age where Christians are taking hard stances on just about anything and everything, making decisions about vaccines and politicians and masks — decisions all held with unflexing, biblical conviction. And then those staunch positions, and the resulting strong language, is justified by Christians in terms of righteous anger — like Jesus flipping tables and not sinning.

A long time back, in an episode on abortion, APJ 672, you made a case for using righteous anger to call out the evil of killing the unborn. It witnesses to the world the degree of such an injustice. But later you were asked about the distinction between unholy anger and holy anger. That was in APJ 1100. And there you said,

I was much more optimistic about a righteous place for anger when I was 30 than I am now. I have seen the destructive power of anger in relationships, especially marriage, to such a degree over the last forty to fifty years that I am far less sanguine about so-called righteous anger than I once was. Anger is not just a relationship destroyer; it is a self-destroyer. It eats up all other wholesome emotions.

I’m wondering if that last phrase is connected to your overwhelming emphasis in your ministry on delighting in God and desiring God. Were you there suggesting that ‘righteous anger’ tends to ‘eat up’ the proper, more dominantly necessary emotions of delight and satisfaction in God? And where are you at now in life with the value or dangers of righteous anger?”

I’m glad to address this again. I feel very strongly about it. So was I suggesting that righteous anger can become a destructive anger that eats up the God-glorifying emotions of joy and peace and delight in God? Yes, absolutely, I was suggesting that and believe it. Anger of a certain kind and a certain duration will not only eat up all God-glorifying emotions, but it will eat up virtually all emotions and leave a person with an outward, plastic, superficial personality or persona, and an inward, easily offended cauldron of suppressed anger. I have seen it in life. I see evidences of it in the Bible.

So let’s look at a few passages for why I see things this way and feel as strongly as I do, and perhaps I can give some help not to go there.

Slow to Anger

You have this famous statement in James 1:19–20:

Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Now notice the logic, the logical connection: be slow to anger because the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. So a quick-tempered person is generally experiencing anger that is not of God. And that’s the logic: It is simply man’s anger. Quick anger is regularly man’s anger, not God’s anger. It’s not righteous. It’s destructive. Now listen to these proverbs to see where James has rooted all this. I think James is the closest thing we get to the book of Proverbs in the New Testament. I don’t doubt that he was deeply schooled on Proverbs.

Proverbs 14:17: “A man of quick temper acts foolishly.”
Proverbs 14:29: “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”
Proverbs 15:18: “A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.”
Proverbs 16:32: “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”
Proverbs 19:11: “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”

Wisdom from Above

So then you go over to James 3. I think it is really important to align James 1:19–20 with James 3:14–18, and you see the heavenly alternative to the merely human anger that does not produce the righteousness of God. Here’s what it says.

The wisdom from above [it’s heavenly; not just from a man] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

And remember that James 1:20 said that anger does not produce the righteousness of God. So here you get a harvest of righteousness, and this harvest is sown in peace by those who make peace — in other words, the opposite of anger. Anger seldom accomplishes the good ends that James is after — namely, a harvest of right, good, wholesome, just, loving behavior. It may. I’m going to get to the fact that there is such a thing as righteous anger, but it is really rare, I think, and therefore, James says, “Be slow to go there — very, very slow to get there.”

So the very least we can say from James is that if anger should come, it should come slowly — not necessarily temporally slowly, though that’s probably the case ordinarily, but rather in this sense: It’s got to go through some real serious filters in your soul. It’s got to go through the filter of humility, and through the filter of patience, and through the filter of wisdom, and through the filter of love, and through the filter of self-control. And if it comes out on the other side, it might be righteous anger. It should be slow in the sense that you put it through the paces. Don’t just go there.

Now here comes Ephesians 4. That’s the only other text we will look at in a significant way.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)

So James says, “Be . . . slow to anger.” And Paul says, “Be quick to stop being angry.” That’s really significant, isn’t it? Paul puts a high premium on the duration of anger. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Be done with it by sundown. It’s dangerous. And the danger is the devil. So, James and Paul treat anger as a hot potato: Be slow to catch it. And if you’ve got to catch it, toss it quickly to somebody else — or better, toss it in the river.

Now, why? And Paul gives the reason why it’s so dangerous. He says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Get rid of it quick. Don’t give place to the devil.” So to go to bed seething, to go to bed with a grudge, to go to bed with anger that’s not dealt with — not forgiving people, holding a grudge — is an invitation as you go to sleep to the devil to come on in. And it seems that the devil specializes in moving into this deadly work, his deadly work, where anger is held onto day and night.

So one of the signs of righteous anger is that it comes slowly, and it leaves quickly. It does not dominate. It does its work in the moment, and it doesn’t stay around to contaminate. It doesn’t give place to the devil. And what I’ve been saying for years is that what the devil does, when you give him place by holding onto anger longer than you should, is eat up every alternative, good, God-glorifying emotion. And I would add from what I’ve seen in recent days, that he not only eats up good affections and emotions, but that, in the absence of those affections, he eats truth. He distorts true perceptions. We don’t see things as clearly when anger eats us up.

Consumed Affections

I have seen it. I’ve seen people move from the most mild assessments of someone’s error to damnation. I mean, you wonder, Where did that come from, that they would move to the point of actually damning another person for what started out to be a relatively minor fault? And I think part of the answer is that anger eats up love, anger eats up affections, anger eats up thankfulness, and anger eats up true perceptions of reality. So the point is this:

The devil hates joy in God.
The devil hates tenderhearted compassion.
The devil hates us to be kind to suffering people.
The devil hates sweet affection for our families.
The devil hates it when husbands and wives are tenderhearted and kind and forgiving to each other (Ephesians 4:32).
The devil hates wonder and admiration at the beauties of nature.
The devil hates all the fruit of the Holy Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

He hates them all. And when we give him place in our hearts at night, going to bed with anger, the jaws called anger consume, over time, all those precious affections.

So the present state of my mind here — he asked, “Where’s your mind presently on this issue?” The present state of my mind, both biblically and culturally on this question about anger, is that anger is a dangerous emotion — not necessarily sinful. God, by the way, is the only person who is holy enough to manage it really well. And he does get angry, and he never sins. But we, however, being fallen and sinful, must consider it much more dangerous for us than it is for God. It’s not dangerous for God. Nothing is dangerous for God. It has a proper place, therefore, only when it comes slowly, leaves quickly, and in between, is truly governed by a love for people and the glory of God.

Joyfully Overwhelmed

So, let me end the way Paul does, following up on his admonition not to go to bed angry. He says in the next verses,

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger [now we’re told that not only do you give place to the devil, but you grieve the Spirit, if you hold onto anger] and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:30–32)

And there’s the key, isn’t it? We must let our affections be joyfully overwhelmed that, while we deserve wrath and anger from God, amazingly, we have been forgiven by the death of the only innocent person who ever lived. That state of mind and heart — being forgiven and amazed at our forgiveness, like John Newton in “Amazing Grace” — will keep anger from rising too quickly or staying too long.