http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14727450/we-have-a-father-over-all

When I married, I had wanted to be married for a long time. For sure, I didn’t have to wait as long as many have (and are), but I waited far longer than I expected anyway — long enough to hurt.

That waiting, however, meant that when my wedding day did finally come, it rose all the brighter, stronger, and more vibrant than it would have otherwise, like a sunrise so beautiful it unsettles you. Even if I never saw another picture of that day, I would remember minute details — the squirmy 10-year-old on the aisle, the Scripture reader coming up a song too early, the longer-than-expected wait standing at the altar, her smile when she finally appeared. Even if, without warning, rain had drowned out the sun, soaked everyone in sight, and ruined all our decorations, it would have served only to make our happiness more memorable.

There’s no day quite like a wedding day, and there are few pleasures like those first hours of marriage — the first blissful, awkward steps of a lifelong dance together.

How tragic would it be, though, if our joy in marriage were limited to our memories of that one day? What if my wife and I spent all our years together looking at wedding pictures and retelling the stories of those first hours? What if we never walked beyond the beauties of the altar into the wild and thrilling gardens of actual married life? What if, after all our years waiting for marriage, we settled for a wedding?

As absurd as it may seem, I wonder how many of us have that kind of relationship with the cross.

Beyond the Altar

Some, it seems, love Jesus for forgiving their sins, for canceling their debt, for providing a perfect righteousness in their place — and then spend the rest of their lives rehearsing our justification, as if that were all that the cross could afford. Make no mistake, the cross is our altar — that central, crucial, and glorious event, that deathblow to Satan and all his armies, that blazing climax of history — but it is the altar, not the marriage.

“Without justification, we have no hope, no life, no future, but justification alone is not our life; it is our entry into life.”

Without justification, we have no hope, no life, no future, but justification alone is not our life; it is our entry into life, our gateway into so many more glories, our path into ever-widening fields of grace. And this side of heaven, some of the greatest treasures in those fields are the changes God works in us to make us more like him — the deep, startling, often slow process we call sanctification. “[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,” 1 Peter 2:24 says, “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” Do you relish the opportunity, in Christ, to live to righteousness — to be increasingly holy?

This holiness is not only possible and necessary — no one goes to heaven without it (Hebrews 12:14) — but this holiness also holds the highest and most durable pleasure. As J.C. Ryle writes, “Let us feel convinced, whatever others may say, that holiness is happiness. . . . As a general rule, in the long run of life, it will be found true that ‘sanctified’ people are the happiest people on earth. They have solid comforts which the world can neither give nor take away” (Holiness, 40).

High Cost of Access

Justification — the act by which God declares guilty sinners righteous — is an unfathomably precious and glorious reality.

“Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). The life and death of Christ made an impossibility a reality — those, like me, who should have drowned in divine wrath were instead baptized into oceans of mercy. Those, like me, who deserved every ounce of divine justice have been showered instead with unrelenting peace.

“Through him,” Paul goes on to say, “we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). Access. Many of us live in a world so inundated with access — access to information, access to resources, access to one another — we may have lost the gravity and wonder of a privilege like our access to God.

Despite how small and insignificant we are, and how often we have sinned against him, and how prone we are to take him for granted, God did not make war against us, but received the war to give us peace. He did not cast us into the lake of fire, but sent his Son into the flames so that he might welcome us into his family.

Tents Pitched at Calvary

The grandeur of the glory of this peace, this access, this justification cannot be overstated — unless we make it the only glory of the gospel, unless we never leave the altar. John Piper writes,

Jesus did not die so that we would pitch our tents on Calvary. He died to fill the world — this one and the new one — with his reflected holiness. . . . He died so that we would not be incinerated by the glory of God, but rather spend eternity reflecting it with joy. . . . The glory of justification serves the unending glories of sanctification. (“Justification Is the Gate, Not the Garden”)

Among the gospel glories we might begin to overlook, sanctification might be the most overlooked. Those who champion justification by grace alone, through faith alone — not by works — can understandably become skittish about any talk of works.

The apostle Paul, however, that greatest of all champions of justification, did not shy away from celebrating and pressing for real sanctification. The bright stars of justification and peace and access were not the only stars in his sky. He loved justification — the wedding, the altar, the declaration — but he also wanted to see and experience more of Christ. As he holds up the cross, he draws us, again and again, into the marriage.

Not Only That

“Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God. . . . Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character” (Romans 5:1–4). Not only that — that is the burden of this article. In the gospel, God gives not only forgiveness, but new character. Not only justification, but sanctification. Not only pardon, but transformation. Not only the altar, but the marriage. Don’t limit your joy in Jesus to the relieving of your guilt and shame.

We see these stars of justification and sanctification align again in Titus 3. “God saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy . . . so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5–7). No work we had done won God’s attention or intervention. He saved us through faith alone, by grace alone, according to his great mercy alone. In the very next verse, Paul writes, “I want you to insist on these things” — the justification of sinners by faith, not by works — “so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works” (Titus 3:8). We were justified by faith alone, not by works, in order that we might devote ourselves to good works.

“Jesus died to redeem and to purify, to justify and to sanctify.”

Or, as he wrote just sentences earlier, “[Jesus Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). He died to redeem and to purify, to justify and to sanctify. To celebrate justification, and not sanctification, is to celebrate half a gospel, half a cross, half a grace, and half a Christ. As much as any voice in history, Paul fought to preach and preserve justification by faith alone, but justification was not the destination. It was driving him somewhere. Paul was not content to rejoice only in the canceling of his sins, but longed to experience greater freedom from the power of his sins.

In fact, he prized his blood-bought, Spirit-empowered, grace-filled holiness so much that he could rejoice even in suffering. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character.” He could rejoice in imprisonments, rejoice in beatings, rejoice in robberies, rejoice in hunger and need, rejoice even in betrayal, because he saw how adversity conformed him to Christ. He knew that when suffering is met with faith, the fire produces and refines a wealth of godliness.

Marriage Beautifies the Wedding

Not only, however, does justification lead us into the glories of sanctification; the glorious experience of sanctification also leads us further into the glories of justification. Notice how this sequence in Romans 5 ends: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3–4). Hope — in other words, a deeper and stronger assurance that we belong to Jesus and will spend eternity with him.

Christlikeness is a prize to be pursued and treasured, in part, because it strengthens our confidence in our justification. Every inch of progress in godliness is another testimony that God is real and that he really lives in you. Holiness not only flows from hope, but actually produces greater hope. Just as a good marriage, year by year, makes the wedding day more beautiful and meaningful.

So don’t forget the wedding, but don’t miss the marriage. Praise Christ every day for the fathomless gifts of forgiveness, of peace, of access — of full acceptance with a holy God because of Christ — but also plead to experience everything else he is and bought for you.

Though only four chapters long, the book of Jonah is filled strange and unique elements.

Whereas most prophets speak to other nations from Israel, God calls Jonah to address Nineveh from Nineveh. Prophets often resist God’s call, but Jonah actually runs away. On the boat headed for Joppa, idolatrous sailors encounter the living God and immediately begin to worship him. And then, of course, Jonah survives the sea by being swallowed by an enormous fish and living in its belly for three days.

When Jonah finally does preach to the Ninevites, they respond to his preaching with unrivaled repentance — and everyone, including the animals, takes part in mourning for sin. And though every preacher I know longs for Nineveh-like revival, Jonah is distraught at the city’s repentance and angry that God would show such wide compassion.

Finally, the book doesn’t end with a nice resolution. By the Lord’s providence, a plant grows up quickly to shade Jonah from the heat, but then, by that same providence, a worm destroys the plant. In the face of Jonah’s anger, God asks the prophet a question that is also intended for the reader: “Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:11).

Among all these strange and unique elements, consider the book’s last phrase. Why does the story of Jonah end with the mention of “also much cattle”?

God’s Angry Prophet

To get to an answer to that question, let’s remember the near context. Chapter 4 begins with Jonah enraged with God. And here, we find out why Jonah ran away from Nineveh the first time. He tells the Lord, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (Jonah 4:2). Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he knew the Lord’s heart to bless; he knew and believed the Lord’s own self-disclosure that he is gracious and merciful and relents from disaster (Exodus 34:6–7).

Because Jonah knew God’s character, he knew that if he went to Nineveh and preached, the Ninevites might turn from their violence — and God, being the gracious God he is, would relent. Jonah was running away from giving Nineveh an opportunity to experience the mercy of God. One of the tragic ironies of this book is that Jonah himself experiences great mercy from the Lord (who spares him from death through the great fish), and yet Jonah is angry when the Ninevites experience that same mercy.

“God is the missionary in this book, pursuing both Nineveh and his prophet with amazing grace.”

But just as God drew near to Cain when Cain was angry at him (Genesis 4:6–7), in mercy and compassion, God draws near to Jonah. Though Jonah is quick to anger, the Lord is slow to anger. He asks Jonah an important heart-revealing question: “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4). God is not only interested in Nineveh experiencing his mercy; he is also pursuing Jonah. God is the missionary in this book, pursuing both Nineveh and his prophet with his amazing grace.

While Jonah waits to see what God will do with Nineveh, God moves into the next stage of pursuing Jonah’s angry heart. After Jonah makes some shade for himself from the heat, the Lord appoints a plant to add extra shade. Jonah is very happy about the Lord’s kindness to him (Jonah 4:6). But when God appoints a worm to destroy the plant, and a scorching east wind to beat down on, Jonah is angry again — this time about the loss of the plant that shaded him from the heat. And now, in a very personal way, the Lord draws near to highlight his own compassion for Nineveh.

Pitying Plants and People

God’s words to Jonah follow a common form of argumentation as he moves from the lesser to the greater:

You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle? (Jonah 4:10–11)

In this question, God affirms that Jonah is right, in a way, to have pity for the plant. But Jonah neither labored for nor cultivated the plant, and he experienced its relief for only a day. If Jonah is right to have compassion on the plant, is not the Lord’s right to have compassion on a city of more than 120,000 people, along with much cattle?

Now, with the context settled, we can get back to our question: Why does the Lord mention cattle?

In one sense, the mention of cattle is simply a part of the lesser-to-greater argument. Plants are important, and Jonah is right to have pity for the plant, but people and cattle are even more important than plants. Isn’t it right for the Lord to have pity on a great city with all kinds of people and cattle?

But to me and other commentators, the mention of cattle also signals something important that we need to remember about God’s love for all creation, for all he himself has made, from plants to animals to humans.

God’s Care for All His Works

God has made humans in his image (Genesis 1:26–27), and this was the crowning act of the six days of creation. He made humans a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:5). To save humans, the Son of God became like us in every way, except for sin (Hebrews 2:17; 4:15). We humans are of great value to God, and though we have rebelled, God has much mercy for us.

At the same time, though not in the same way, God cares about animals. He has pity and compassion on animals. Animals are his creation, and God cares about what animals experience in his world. This is one of the reasons Israel was not to muzzle the ox (Deuteronomy 25:4). This is also why Jesus teaches us not to be anxious, based on the beauty of the plants of the field and the Father’s care for birds (Matthew 6:25–34). Notice Jesus’s lesser-to-greater argument regarding our Father’s care:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:26)

Jesus’s logic is clear. Our Father feeds and cares for the birds of the air; they have what they need when they need it, though they do not sow, reap, or gather. The Father himself feeds them. And we are of more value than birds.

“Just because we humans are of more value than birds, plants, or cattle doesn’t mean they are of no value.”

But just because we humans are of more value than birds, plants, or cattle doesn’t mean they are of no value to our gracious and compassionate God. Cattle are of value to God, and we are to value them, as he does.

He Cares for Cattle — and Dogs

We could apply God’s surprising regard for animals in various ways, but I want to close with just one.

In 2007, I had to euthanize the first dog my wife and I owned. His name was Elliott, and he was a black-and-white English springer spaniel who went everywhere with us. We loved Elliott. I learned how to pheasant and grouse hunt with him, and we had a great bond. But in time, his body filled with cancer. When I took him to the vet to be with him in his last moments, I was not prepared for the waves of grief that would come upon me then and for weeks after we put him down. I felt silly and embarrassed telling friends about this because I would start to weep. He was just a dog, but I was grieving as if I had lost a close friend.

And that’s when Jonah 4:11 and the Lord’s pity for cattle started to help me. Yes, Elliott was a dog. But the Lord cares about dogs because he created dogs. I am right to have compassion on my dog. The Lord is right to have compassion on cattle; he made, sustains, and cares for cattle. Even more, God is right to have compassion on Nineveh, that great city. And it is absolutely amazing that the Lord would have compassion on me and you.