Audio Transcript

How do we determine the monetary value of our personal skills and gifts? And what are they worth to other Christians? This is a really practical question for a lot of you, applicable to anyone in a local church who has a skill set or gifting that benefits others.

Today’s question comes particularly from a listener in Los Angeles who writes this: “Pastor John, hello, and thank you for the APJ podcast. My question is a reoccurring heart issue for my life. I’m a graphic designer. I’m trying to live out my gift according to 1 Peter 4:10: ‘As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.’ How can I obey this verse without feeling resentful and bitter toward people — Christians and non-Christians — who mainly contact me because I have a skill that can fulfill their need, but who use my skills and never pay me for them?

“I often feel ‘used’ and deemed worthy for ‘friendship’ by what I can do, not who I am. My assumption is that if I did not possess this graphic-design gift, these people would never contact me. How do we think about the value of skills that are God-given, about the right of making a little bit of money from these God-given gifts to make a living?”

That’s a really good question that many Christians need to think about, because I have seen professionals in the church misused. This happens when people unthinkingly — I think it’s usually unthinkingly — take advantage of their professional connections in the church family to get free services, services that most people are paying for. Like services from a doctor, or a lawyer, or a plumber, or a carpenter, or a designer.

People just ask them to do little jobs or little consultations, say, in the evening or after church — it’s their gift, after all — without even thinking how this may be unbiblical by mooching or exploiting. And I’ll come back to those words, mooching and exploiting, in just a minute.

Gifts and Skills

The first thing that I would say about the text our friend quotes, 1 Peter 4:10–11, is that these verses are not speaking directly about professional services, but about spiritual gifts in the church. The text says,

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks [like preaching or teaching], as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

But even though I think these verses are referring directly to spiritual gifts in the church, some of them are remunerated in the church — for example, when Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:17–18 that some elders who have the gift of teaching should be paid.

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”

That’s elevating some of these to the point of professional skills.

Get and Give

So I think some of those spiritual gifts rise to the level of vocational callings, which Paul says should be paid. And that means, I think, that it is fair to draw some principles out of these texts that do in fact relate to the question of natural gifts or natural skills that a person has and uses to make a living. One principle is this: God intends for us to work in order to make a living and not to be dependent on others whenever it’s unnecessary.

Here’s where I get that. First Thessalonians 4:11–12 says, “Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” One of the functions of work is to make enough money so that you don’t have to depend on others inappropriately, so it’s right to be paid for your work. As we heard earlier, “The laborer deserves his wages. Don’t muzzle the ox while he’s treading out the grain.”

“One of the functions of work is to make enough money so that you don’t have to depend on others inappropriately.”

Now, I don’t want to overstate the case. This does not mean there’s no room for merciful generosity to help those in need with your professional skill. I mean, Christians all over the world do this. A dentist will take his Fridays off, go to the inner city, set up a little clinic, and give free dental care. That’s beautiful. I’m not at all discouraging that.

In fact, Paul says that one of the reasons for working to make a living is so that we might have something to give. It’s what he says in Ephesians 4:28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”

So I’m not saying that those with special skills and gifts should never use them freely and generously to help others. All the commands Jesus says to be generous, to give to the needy, even to be willing to be taken advantage of — they’re all still in the Bible. And what our friend is drawing our attention to in asking this question is that there is more than one kind of teaching in the Bible, and neither should cancel out the other.

There’s the command to give freely to the needy, and there’s the command to earn your living so that you and your family can eat and be clothed. So, “work to get to use” and “work to get to give” are both in the Bible. Go to work so that you can get, so that you can use it to put a roof over your head, and work and get so that you have lots to be generous with and help others. They’re both in the Bible, and that’s the tension of love and wisdom that our graphic designer is challenged with.

Willing to Pay

But I think those in his or her network (friends, the church) need to hear another message from the Bible — namely, the message found in 2 Thessalonians 3. Remember, some Christians in the church in Thessalonica had become seized by a kind of hysteria about the nearness of the second coming of Christ. So they had stopped working and started to live in idleness, expecting the momentary return of Jesus while mooching off of those who kept on working for a living. So here’s how Paul responds to that in 2 Thessalonians 3:6–8:

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.

That’s amazing. Paul was so jealous not to give the impression that he could exploit the work of others while he lived in idleness, that he didn’t eat anybody’s bread without paying for it. Amazing. Now, that’s the message some of the believers need to hear who are taking advantage of people’s services without paying for them. Here’s how Paul continues:

It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. (2 Thessalonians 3:9–11)

So the point that I’m drawing out of that text for our question is this: the network of Christians who are taking advantage of the work of others to get something that most people are paying for — they need to be taught, “Don’t do that. That is, don’t presume upon that. Be willing to pay. If the skilled person wants to make a special gift to you, that’s the skilled person’s decision to make, not yours to expect.”

Grace-Wrought Culture

And to the graphic designer himself or herself I would say this: pray that God would direct people’s hearts in the right way. In other words, pray that people would wake up to what they’re doing, and then perhaps talk to your pastor or teachers in the church to see if they can begin to apply the Scriptures to this issue for a while in the church.

“We must not exploit those who are hard at work making a living, but rather take responsibility for our own needs.”

Hopefully, this will create a culture in the church that includes both generosity and even willingness to be taken advantage of for Christ’s sake, but also a sense that we must not mooch off of, we must not exploit, those who are hard at work making a living, but rather take responsibility for our own needs instead of depending on others to give us freebies.

Behind both those aspects of church culture — generosity and responsibility, those are the two poles I’m talking about — is the grace of the Lord Jesus. He gives the grace to work, and he gives the grace to give, and he gets the glory both ways.

Part 1 Episode 120 When Martin Luther discovered the gospel in the Scriptures, everything changed for him and the future of the church. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper begins a 3-part series exploring Luther’s relationship with the Bible.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning. Thanks for joining us again. Well, we happen to be in a season on the podcast looking at some mature issues, and those issues are rather bleak. Not by design — it just ended up that way providentially in the questions we have on the table. Last Monday, we looked at whether we can be angry at God when life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped it would. That was APJ 1828. Then we looked at how to overcome anger in the home. That was APJ 1829. And last time, on Friday, a wife asked about how to confront some deep, ongoing sin patterns in the life of her husband. That was APJ 1830.

And that brings us to today. A young wife writes in. She was betrayed. And now she endures the lingering pain of a husband who left her for another woman. Here’s what she writes: “Pastor John, hello, and thank you for taking my question. I’ve been struggling for two years to find the right biblical approach to this, and hope that perhaps you can afford me some clarity. My husband, once a professing believer in Christ, left our three young girls and me for another woman. He divorced me a little over a year ago. Throughout this journey, I have struggled with an appropriate, God-honoring response to his ongoing sinful and hurtful behaviors toward our daughters and me. I am torn between a righteous anger and ‘tough love,’ as Jesus showed by turning tables in the temple, and an unconditional grace, as in turning the other cheek, loving my enemies, and 1 Peter 2:23. What is the biblical approach to responding to such betrayal and unrepentant sin?”

Let’s start with some things that Jesus says about forgiveness and about loving our enemies.

Full Forgiveness and Enemy Love

Forgiveness in its fullest form involves two parties, one of which has sinned against the other and is repenting and asking for forgiveness. And the other was sinned against and is graciously granting the forgiveness being sought through repentance. We see a picture of this in Luke 17:3–4: “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
So that’s a picture of the two-way street: wronging and repenting, and forgiving. And forgiveness in the fullest sense is only possible when there is that kind of repentance.

Then we ask, “Well, what’s required of us if the person who has sinned against us does not repent?” And the answer is that we are called to love our enemy. In a sense, you could call this a kind of forgiveness because forgiveness in its essence means letting something go. Don’t use it to return evil for evil or to hurt another person.

But this one-sided mercy is not forgiveness in the fullest sense. And so the New Testament has other ways of describing how we relate to people who wrong us and either don’t care (they’re just thumbing their nose at us), or they don’t think they wronged us. We call this different names. The New Testament calls it patience, long-suffering, forbearance, or enemy love.

And to be clear, when Jesus speaks of loving our enemies, he doesn’t have in mind warm feelings of admiration or approval. Instead, Jesus gives three examples — or maybe better, three explanations — in Luke 6:27–28. He says that loving our enemies involves this: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” So three things: do good, bless, pray for.

So what we’re called to do toward those who have wronged us or continue to wrong us is to wish their ultimate good — which might involve temporary pain, like prison. I mean, he’s not saying there’s no consequences for sins and crimes — it might be some discipline from the church or some justice in society. But he is saying, “Wish their ultimate good.” That’s what bless means, and that’s what we pray for. And then put that into action by doing good — that is, seeking to treat them in ways better than they deserve.

Four Objections Overcome

Now, I can think of numerous objections that might come up of why such forgiveness or love toward people who have wronged you, like this particular betraying of a husband that is so painful, why it would be so hard. Or maybe we would feel it to be even wrong to treat a person as well as Jesus says we should.

So let me address four of those objections that might arise, particularly for this wife. And I think maybe even this will even clarify what’s really involved in such a relationship of betrayal and forgiveness.

No Injustice in Eternity

Here’s the first one. It just seems unjust that, in a sense, the guilty person has gotten away with so much, a great wrong, without paying any serious price, while leaving a lot of devastation in the wake. Now, the biblical answer to that objection and that heartfelt concern is that God, in his universe, never lets anybody get away with anything — never. Nobody gets away with anything. The way we can sleep at night, knowing that it seems like someone has gotten away with murder, is this promise in Romans 12:19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

Now that’s a promise: “I will repay.” What that means is that God will settle all accounts with absolute justice, and nobody ever gets away with anything when you take all of eternity into account. When we refuse to enact vengeance ourselves, God takes up our cause and performs, eventually, everything that needs to be done so that there’s perfect justice. Therefore, we dare never say, “Well, I guess they just got away with it.” Nobody ever gets away with anything. But the burden of settling accounts is lifted. It’s lifted from us and put on God’s shoulders, who does all things well. He will settle accounts either in hell, or he has settled accounts on the cross. Nobody gets away with anything. That’s the first objection that God overcomes with this promise of justice.

Forgiveness Versus Trust

A second objection to this kind of forgiveness that feels so hard — or this enemy love — is that we simply cannot trust the person who has wronged us. Now, the answer to this objection is that forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. You can genuinely forgive while not yet trusting again.

“Forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. You can genuinely forgive while not yet trusting again.”

I don’t say this will be easy. It won’t be easy. A person might say, “You have not really forgiven me, because you’re holding this over my head in not trusting me.” But the response to that is this: “I’m not holding the guilt of past acts, or sin, or hurt over your head. I forgive you for that, and I pray God will, and I wish you well. What I am dealing with is not a past guilty act but a present concern that your character does not warrant a present trust. You may gain that trust eventually, but it has not yet been established.”

That’s my answer to the objection “It’s just too hard to trust.” And I’m saying forgiveness and trust aren’t the same.

Love and Abhorrence

A third objection to forgiveness and love that’s so hard is that the action, the wrong, was so abhorrent to your heart — that is, you still recoil inside with disgust or abhorrence toward it. Now, the answer to that objection is that genuine love and abhorrence of evil are not mutually exclusive, not even in the same heart at the same time. I’ve always been amazed at Romans 12:9, at what Paul puts back-to-back. He says this: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil.” That’s amazing that he would put love and abhorrence next to each other in the same command, in the very same verse, back-to-back. “Let love be genuine. Abhor . . .” — it’s a big word. I mean, it’s not the word hate. It’s really emotionally a strong word in Greek.

“It is possible to bless, and pray for, and do good to a person whose destructive attitudes and actions we abhor.”

It is possible to bless, and pray for, and do good to a person whose destructive attitudes and actions we abhor. That’s my answer to the third objection.

Deep Wickedness, Glorious Forgiveness

Finally, a fourth objection might be, “Look, Pastor John, my children, who’ve been abandoned and betrayed by their dad, need to know how evil the action of their father was, and that doesn’t seem loving to him or maybe to them to tell them.” Now, I think that’s one of the hardest issues in dealing with a divorce while trying to maintain some kind of relationship between the children and both parents, especially when one of them has grievously, maybe abhorrently, sinned. So much will depend on how old the children are, and how much they can understand, and what their own spiritual maturity is.

But I would say that it is essential that the evil of the betrayal not be minimized, because in order for forgiveness to be as glorious as it is, evil must be as wicked as it is. Therefore, as the children are able, we try to make both of those clear: the evil of the sin, and the beauty of the forgiveness — because of how the Lord has forgiven us.

And so it may be that, in the end, even at one of the most painful points in the tragedy, the gospel can shine brightly in the lives of our children.