When Jesus went to the cross for you, you were not worth dying for. It wasn’t something in you that convinced him to bear the nails, the thorns, the wrath.

We’ve heard so much about his real and wondrous love for us that we might forget his love is wondrous precisely because we were not. Because, when he set his loving eyes on us, we were corrupt, defiant, repulsive. We were the treacherous wife prostituting herself out and then spending the husband’s money on other lovers. We should have been swallowed by holy rage, not by his mercy.

And yet he died for us, even us. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. . . . God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6, 8). Do you know that God loved you before there was anything in you to love? Do you know that Christ died for you when you were still at your worst, when your black heart had wandered its furthest and hardened near to cracking?

Good Friday bids us to stop and remember just how sinful we were — just how bleak it was for us before that darkest day in history — and to remember the wild and tenacious love with which we’ve been loved.

While You Were Weak

While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)

When Jesus went to the cross for you, you were weak — and not a little tired or flawed, but lame and helpless. Incapacitated. This word for weak is the same word used for the crippled man whom Peter and John met on their way to the temple in Acts 3. He was lame from birth, and had to be carried to the temple gate every day so that he could beg for enough to survive another day. That’s the kind of weak you were when Jesus found you.

In fact, Jesus died only for weak people. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” he warned those who thought themselves strong. “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31–32). “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). He loves whom he loves to show us just how shortsighted all our “wisdom” really is and to expose the sickly frailty of our so-called “strength.”

While You Were Wicked

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

You were not only weak and helpless, however, but also thoroughly wicked. Your heart was deceitful and desperately sick (Jeremiah 17:9). Can you see that kind of darkness in your former self? Even your very best deeds were as filthy rags, because they were polluted with selfishness and pride. “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Everything you thought or said or did was an act of defiance. “Terribly black must that guilt be,” J.C. Ryle observes, “for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction” (Holiness, 8–9).

“When Jesus went to the cross for you, you were not worth dying for.”

“Do not be deceived,” the apostle warns us. “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). And lest we think he has other, especially wicked people in mind, he says in the next verse, “And such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11). All of that nasty, ugly evil was who you were, at least some of you.

And who you were was who Christ came to save. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).

While You Were Hostile

If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)

In our wickedness, we sinned not just against the laws of God, but against God himself. All of our sinfulness was (and is) intensely personal. Your life apart from Christ was one prolonged act of divine hostility.

When King David slept with another man’s wife, impregnated her, and then had her husband murdered, notice how he confesses his sin to God: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:3–4). How could he say that? What about Bathsheba? What about righteous Uriah? What about the precious infant son who died because of his sin?

His prayer doesn’t diminish the awful sins he committed against the husband, the wife, the child — he sinned grievously against each — but it reminds us that the greatest offense in any sin is the offense against God. As awful as adultery and murder are at a human level, they’re a thousand times worse at a heavenly one. To be an unforgiven sinner, even a polite, socially acceptable sinner, is to be “alienated and hostile in mind” (Colossians 1:21).

And yet, while you were hostile, Christ died for you. In love, he walked directly into the arms of your animosity and bore its curse for you on the cross. He made his perverse and ruthless enemies his friends, his own brothers.

While You Were Dead

You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. (Ephesians 2:1–2)

You were not merely weak and wicked and hostile, though. You were dead. Sure, you may have been moving and breathing and eating and talking, but in all the ways that matter most, you were empty, barren, cold. You weren’t gasping for air or hanging on in a coma. The doctor had called it. And while you were lying in your lifeless blood, Jesus stopped beside you. And he not only stopped, but he chose to bleed and die so that you might stand up and live. Christ took the awful thing that killed you — your sin — and then breathed his own life and joy into your unmoving heart.

“Do you know that God loved you before there was anything in you to love?”

Who would die for a dead man? The one who died for you. Who would die for his enemy? The one who died for you. Who would die for a sinner? The one who died for you. He found you at your very worst, saw all of you at your very worst, and then he made himself your worst, so that in him you might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

There Is a Remedy

One reason we lack the depth, faith, and joy we long to experience is that we fail to confront the sinfulness of sin — specifically, the sinfulness of our own sin. When Ryle wrote his classic book on holiness, he believed he had to begin here, with our weakness, wickedness, hostility, and ruin:

Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies, and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies. (Holiness, 1)

Why do people wander after false gods and false gospels? Because they don’t take sin seriously enough. If they saw sin for what it is — crippling our souls, corrupting and twisting our minds, seeding hostility, and breeding death — then they would see that the cross is the only cure. Then they would find in Jesus a God more lovely than they are wicked, more alive than they are dead, more forgiving than they are guilty.

There is a remedy revealed for man’s need, as wide and broad and deep as man’s disease. We need not be afraid to look at sin, and study its nature, origin, power, extent, and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the Almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. (Holiness, 12)

So, this Good Friday, look deeply again into the awful weight of sin — and then look even more deeply into the loving eyes of the sinless Man of Sorrows, crucified and crushed for you.

I don’t need to rehearse the weighty reasons why many of us pastors are feeling depleted, disheartened, fed up. We might still be smiling on the outside. But inside, it’s often a different story. Obviously, one article can’t fix it all. But maybe I can say something here that, by God’s grace, will strengthen a brother’s weary hands. Three thoughts are flooding my mind for you, in ascending order of priority.

1. Gut It Out

My first point is not the most important one. But still, as a pastor who himself has been beaten up along the way, I have to say this. Brother, gut it out! We must. In this world, which is going to stay broken until Jesus comes back, we must get up tomorrow morning and make life happen, and do our jobs, and advance the ministry — and then get up the next morning, and do it all over again.

What’s the alternative? Quitting? No way! We are not going to surrender our calling to Satan just because we’re suffering. He’s suffering too. Satan can read. He knows what the Bible says. He knows his doom is sure. And he sees his doom in you: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20). Yes, under your feet. But that wretched loser, in his malice and rage, wants to bring you down while he’s going down. That’s why he wants you to feel defeated — so that you’ll quit, so that he can gloat.

“We’re weary and weak and winning, by the unbeatable power of the risen Christ in us.”

Don’t you see how we’re winning? We’re weary and weak and winning, by the unbeatable power of the risen Christ in us. So, no way are we going to budge even one inch from our God-given advantage as faithful ministers of the gospel. Like football players, we play hurt. Pain is just part of the game. We even like it that way. When it’s late in the fourth quarter, and we’re all bloody and bruised and sweaty and exhausted, but we keep running the plays, we know we’re real football players. And in these longest years, we pastors know we’re real soldiers of the cross. We’re not sitting on the bench. We’re in the game.

Serving Jesus faithfully, pushing through the pain, feels good. Giving Satan a really bad day feels good. My brother pastor, when I think about you ruggedly putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward day after day, as the strength of Christ is made perfect in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), I almost feel sorry for the devil! Almost.

So, let’s gut it out.

2. Dig Deeper, Risk Honesty

John 1:16 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” There is nothing small about Jesus. He has fullness of grace upon grace for our need upon need. Our risen Lord above, at this very moment, is not tired, and he’s not tired of you. You can dig deeper into his grace, deeper than you’ve ever dug before, and you will never touch bottom.

You will never ask too much of him. You will never ask too often. He will never respond to you with an eye roll and say, “Really? You again? This is the nineteenth time just today you’ve come back asking for more strength. What is your problem?” No, that’s what we’re like. Let’s never project onto him our own pettiness. He has fullness of grace for you, moment by moment. Go to him. Go back to him. Never stop going back to him. He is always happy to welcome you and help you — the real you.

Which raises another point. As you are going deeper into his endless grace, why not share that adventure with your people? Their lives are no carnival thrill ride, either. They are suffering too. So maybe there’s a Sunday coming up soon when you can risk transparency and vulnerability with your people at church. Maybe there’s an appropriate moment when you can go before them and say something like this:

Friends, I think this church needs a new pastor. And I’d like to be that new pastor. I want to change. I want to go deeper with Jesus. Please pray for me. And maybe you’d like to go there with me. I can’t right now foresee how it will all play out. But my status quo sure isn’t working for me. How about you? Can we together walk in newness of life, one step at a time? How about joining me here at the front of the church right after this service? Let’s give our need to the Lord in prayer. He will be glad to bless us!

A pastor who digs deeper into the grace of Jesus and risks honesty with his people — you can be that pastor. Go for it!

3. Watch God Flip Your Low Moment

One of the surprising themes in the Bible is “redemptive reversals,” to quote my friend Greg Beale. The point is, God moves in counterintuitive ways. Our grandiosity flops, and his “failures” save the world. Our wisdom flunks, and his “foolishness” outsmarts the experts. Our ministries hit the wall, and his “weakness” breaks through. In the Bible, it’s obvious. But in our lives, we often have to experience it before we really believe it.

When we start our ministry journey, we love Jesus, of course. But understanding him more deeply might go something like this: You answer his call, go to seminary, pastor a church, preach the gospel in a biblical, positive way, and people start lighting up! Well, most people light up. Others start freaking out. As the Lord puts his hand of blessing on your church, moving in and taking over — that is not what some people bargained for when they called you. And their unhappiness is your fault, of course. You are the new factor in “their church.” So you are the problem, even the enemy. And you’re thinking, “Wait, what?” But that’s just for starters.

Then a presidential election gets people riled up. Add to that, racist violence and tribal hatred and online rancor. Then pile on the pandemic and lockdowns and masks and vaccines and Zoom meetings and livestream preaching and more political craziness — and your pastoral capacities are beyond maxed out. All of which leads you, not to a dead end, but to a threshold: redemptive reversal.

“These hard years you’ve struggled through are not the end of your ministry. They can be the beginning of your real ministry.”

These hard years you’ve struggled through are not the end of your ministry. They can be the beginning of your real ministry. Your disaster is not the defeat of God’s purpose for you. It can be the fulfillment of God’s purpose for you. Your best days in ministry may still lie ahead. I know. The Lord did this for me. And I’m nobody special, just another pastor like you, like so many. But all of us serve a very surprising Savior.

If you will dare to believe it, defying every reason to give up, you will find yourself closer to the heart of God than you’ve ever been before. And for the rest of your life, you will have something to offer suffering people that is deep, profound, life-giving. You will offer them a hope that is convincing, durable, undefeatable — by God’s grace, for his glory alone.

God be with you, brothers, as you take your next step forward.

Some of the most life-changing verses in the Bible are those that come alive years after we first read them. We read them and pass over them, read them and pass over them, read them again, and then suddenly reality breaks through, and their meaning explodes in our imagination. I wonder if any verses like that come to mind for you.

Years ago, a line in Psalm 4 leapt out of the fog of familiarity and arrested my attention. At first, it exhilarated me, awakening me to spiritual wells I had walked by (and looked past) again and again. Then it humbled me, confronting me with how weak and fickle my heart can be. And then, finally, it has strengthened me, stirring my desire and ambition for Christ and building my courage in him. King David writes,

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. (Psalm 4:7)

Surprised by Joy

The verse slid under my radar for years, I think, because it rang like a cliché to my immature and naive ears — like a sentence beautiful enough for Pinterest, but just out of touch with the heavier realities of real life. I would read verses like this, feel vaguely inspired for a moment, and then move on and forget them minutes later. The vagueness evaporated, however, when I slowed down enough to finally see through the window this verse opens for us.

David does not say, “You have given me great joy,” or even, “You have given me as much joy as those in the world have in their finest meals and fullest pleasures.” No, he says, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” If it was a word that seized me, it was the word more. As David weighs his joy in God against the greatest pleasures on earth — the most expensive experiences, in the most exotic places, with the most famous people — he finds the world’s offer wanting. He prefers what he has tasted through faith over anything else he might see or do or buy.

Do you think about your faith in God that way? When you think about Jesus, do you ever think in terms of joy, delight, fulfillment, pleasure? Have you actually been taught, subtly or explicitly, to pit him against your happiness? The discovery for me, at that time, was that I did not have to walk away from joy to follow Jesus. In fact, I could only find the richest, most intense happiness in him.

Stubborn Longings for Less

The more you sit with a verse like this, however, the heavier it can become. The promise of experiencing a joy like David’s can give way to the troubling realization that we do not yet experience it. Can I really say, with him, “God, you have given me more joy than the world has in its greatest joys?” Am I as happy in Jesus as they are in their food, and friends, and careers, and vacations, and possessions? We know we should be able to say what David says, and yet we also know our own hearts well enough to wonder whether we can.

I feel how slow my heart can be to enjoy God. Sin never prefers God over grain or wine or television or self. And sin still lives in me. As John Piper says, we humans, in our sin, “have a deep, unshakable, compelling preference for other things rather than God” (“What Is Sin?”). This sin isn’t just a lingering tendency to do the wrong thing, but a stubborn longing for the wrong thing. So, Bible reading can sometimes feel burdensome. Prayer can sometimes feel stale. Fellowship can feel forced. Joy in God can feel distant and theoretical.

“Sin isn’t just a lingering tendency to do the wrong thing, but a stubborn longing for the wrong thing.”

To be clear, appreciating grain and wine is not sin. The psalmists celebrate and worship God for both (see Psalm 65:9; 104:19). Our joy in grain and wine and every other good gift from God is meant to kindle our joy in him, not compete with him (James 1:17). Preferring grain or wine or anything else to God is sin. And according to 1 John 1:8, we all, at times, prefer wrongly. We crave lesser, thinner joys over all we have in Christ.

How Long, O Lord?

Even if we overcome our inner resistance to this joy, though, the harsher realities of life also become hurdles to joy. The book of Psalms, after all, is not one long chorus of joy. It holds out a life of worship that is not comfortable or predictable, but difficult and demanding, even agonizing, at times.

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. (Psalm 6:2–3)

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? (Psalm 13:1–2)

The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. (Psalm 18:4–5)

Again and again, the brighter moments of gladness punctuate song after song of hardship. David’s life, in particular, was terribly painful. After he was chosen to be the next king, he was hunted by Saul. After he committed adultery and had the woman’s husband killed, he lost his infant son. Later, another son, Amnon, died at the hands of his own brother, Absalom, who then fled. And when the estranged son eventually returned, he betrayed his father, organized a mutiny, and stole the kingdom.

The agony David experienced (some because of his own sin, and much because of sins against him) makes his words in Psalm 4:7 even sweeter and more compelling. His pain doesn’t gut what he says about joy, but proves it, revealing that this joy is unusually potent and resilient.

Even as I Lose All

When David writes, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound,” he is not writing from the comfort of a palace in peacetime; he is writing from hiding, while Absalom has seized his throne. Psalms 3 and 4 are the morning and evening psalms of a man betrayed. David suffered much throughout his life and reign, but did anything sting like the stab in the back from his own son?

“No amount of darkness and loss could take the depth and fullness of his joy in God.”

And yet he was not utterly miserable, even while he watched the boy he once held and fed and played with plunder his life’s work. No, “You have put more joy in my heart” — even now — “than they have when their grain and wine abound.” Even while my son indulges himself on my grain and my wine and my wealth, even as I lose nearly all that I love, even while I fear for my life, God, you have made me glad in you — more glad than sinners have in their happiest moments. No amount of darkness and loss could take the depth and fullness of his joy in God.

This joy isn’t merely for the lighter, more comfortable, more cheerful moments of the Christian life, but it’s also strong enough for the trenches, the valleys, the storms. What God did for a wounded and despairing king in the throes of betrayal, he now promises to do for us in the throes of whatever we face or carry. And what greater, more practical gift could he give us than to say, in any circumstance, however bleak or painful, I will not only keep your life, but make you glad?