The subordinate goal of this message is to explain and defend the claim that truth triumphs through pleasure. The ultimate goal of this message is that you, and your people through your ministry, would feel — and forever feel — the greatest pleasure in God through Jesus Christ.

To say that the ultimate goal of this message is a heart-experience — an enjoyment, a spiritual emotion — in you and your people is not a contradiction of the universal biblical teaching that the ultimate goal of all things (including this message!) is the fullest exhibition of the glory of God, filling the new creation without rival. And the reason it’s not a contradiction is because God’s ultimate goal for all things will not be reached until the bride of Christ experiences her fullest possible pleasure in her beloved Jesus Christ, who is God, blessed forever. Amen (Romans 9:5).

I’m an Edwardsean lover of the glory of God down to my toes. When Edwards speaks of
God’s glory as the goal of all things, my heart soars:

It appears that all that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works is included in that one phrase, “the glory of God”; . . . In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; his fullness is received and returned. Here is both emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair. (The End for Which God Created the World, 526, 531)

Amen. Could anything be more God-centered, God-exalting, God-entranced! And yet tucked away in that God-besotted paragraph is an explosive statement worth giving your life to: “In the creature’s . . . rejoicing in . . . God, the glory of God is exhibited.” That is, “In the creature’s pleasure in God, the glory of God is exhibited.” If that is true, then truth triumphs through pleasure. And for you and your people to attain that pleasure is to share in the triumph.

So, to explain and defend this claim from Scripture, I will try to clarify four connections.

The connection between truth and ultimate reality
The connection between ultimate reality and God
The connection between God and preciousness
The connection between preciousness and pleasure

1. The Connection Between Truth and Ultimate Reality

The biblical words for “truth” (emet and amunah in Hebrew and alētheia in Greek) are used with many different connotations and nuances. When you preach, you don’t take a definition from Piper or MacArthur at a conference and lay it on that text. You pay close attention to the peculiar usage of the word true or truth in that text to see that it carries its own weight.

What I’m going to do here is take hold of two of those many connotations in order to draw out the point that’s relevant for this message, especially the connection between truth and ultimate reality.

First, then, most commonly we speak, and the Bible often speaks, of “truth” as a characteristic of things we say, a characteristic of assertions or statements or propositions. For example, Proverbs 12:17: “Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit.” When we think of truth in this way, it means that our statements correspond to reality. If I say, “My wife is 5 feet, 7 inches tall,” that would be true. But if the reality is that she is 6 feet tall, that statement would not be true. It would not correspond to the reality.

But, second, what is not as common in our speech, but is also a view of “truth” in the Bible, is that the reality to which true statements correspond is called “truth.” For example, when Peter was being delivered by the angel from prison in Acts 12, Luke writes, “[Peter] went out and followed [the angel]. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real [or true], but thought he was seeing a vision” (Acts 12:9). Or Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:8, “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true.” Meaning: We are not fake apostles. We are real.

This is the meaning of truth that I want to take hold of and press into. Truth not only states reality; it is reality. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). “I am . . . the truth.” And Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 1:9, “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” — the real God, the God who is reality. And Jesus Christ is the truth not only because he speaks the truth, but because the ultimate reality about which he speaks is himself.

So, two things have become clear. One is that the Bible uses the word truth or true to refer to what is real, not just statements about what is real. What is real? Truth refers to reality. Truth is not just the opposite of a lie; it is the opposite of an illusion, the opposite of the unreal.

And the second thing that has become clear is that we are confronted with the question of ultimate reality, that is, ultimate truth. When Jesus said, “I am . . . the truth,” and Paul said you serve “the . . . true God,” both are pointing us to the fact that there is such a thing as ultimate reality.

So, we turn to our second point.

2. The Connection Between Ultimate Reality and God

This is the most obvious. But we need to see it and say it to get us where we are going — to preciousness and pleasure. What is ultimate reality? Which we have seen is the same as asking, What is ultimate truth? I think the most fundamental response that God ever gave to that question is found in Exodus 3:13–14.

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I Am has sent me to you.’”

The very least God intends to communicate when he says, “I am,” is “I! A personal being! I am talking to you. I am a person. This is not wind. Or thunder. Or an earthquake. Or a waterfall. I am talking to you. And I am about to electrify you with this truth, this reality: ‘I am who I am.’”

And the next most obvious thing he means is, “I exist. I am real. I am not a myth. I am not imagined. I am not an opiate for the masses. I am not a Freudian projection of wish-fulfillment. I am real. I am more real than the ground you stand on, more real than the sun in your solar system, the skin on your bones, the galaxies at the end of the universe. And the reason I am more real than they are is because their reality is dependent on my reality. Their being depends on my being. Only I can say, ‘I am who I am.’ Everything else must say, ‘I am because he is.’”

This is the way ultimate truth talks: “I am who I am.” Ultimate truth says,

Nobody made me this way. I simply am. I never had a beginning. I never became. I simply was, from all eternity. Nor will I ever end. I depend on nothing to be what I am — no cause, no support, no counsel. Instead, everything depends absolutely on me. Everything is secondary to me. The universe is infinitesimal to me. I carry it in my pocket like a peanut. I never develop, and I cannot be improved. I am absolute fullness, perfection. I conform to nothing outside myself, and therefore I am the standard and measure of all truth and goodness and beauty. There are no constraints from outside me to prevent me from doing what I please. My actions are always free, never dictated from outside. The good pleasure of my will always holds sway. I always act in perfect conformity to the infinite value of my inexhaustible fullness. I am who I am.

For many years I have circled back to this text like a lightning bug staring at the sun and have found it to be electrifying — that God simply is. Explosive. Wild. Untamable. A brightness that changes absolutely everything. God is ultimate reality. That is, ultimate Truth.

Which brings me now to the third point.

3. The Connection Between God and Preciousness

So, step one was that one biblical facet of truth is that it refers to reality, and we are led to see that there is an ultimate reality. And the second step was that this ultimate reality is God, absolute reality, “I am who I am.” And now step three: the connection between God (reality, truth!) and preciousness.

Is ultimate reality ultimately valuable? Is ultimate reality of infinite worth? Is ultimate reality ultimately precious? Let me ask the questions in another way (and then tell you why I’m doing it): Is ultimate reality ultimate value? Is ultimate reality infinite worth? Is ultimate reality ultimate preciousness? Perhaps you see what I’ve done. I’m going beyond saying God has value, has worth, has preciousness, and I’m pushing it further to say that God is value, and God is worth, and God is preciousness. Worth and value and preciousness are intrinsic to God. They are aspects of who he is.

Here’s why I go there. The vast majority of human beings are not born again. Our calling is to do what we can to win them. They are perishing. And we do not want them to perish. “Though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. . . . I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:19, 22).

But if we ask any of those people, before they are born again, whether ultimate reality (God) is valuable, the only categories they have in their minds (the mind of the flesh) for assessing value are the categories that make themselves the measure of God’s value. So, they might say, “Well, if there is ultimate reality, I would hope that he or she or it would help me with my marriage, or my job, or my health, or my children, or my finances. That would be valuable.” In other words, the measure of God’s value would be the measure of his usefulness in helping them attain the pleasures that this world provides.

“If the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it’s because the King is a treasure.”

Some of those people come to your church. And many of your people are talking to them every week. I’m suggesting that this new set of questions might jar them loose from the limits of their categories. (It might jar you loose!) Is God ultimate value? Is God infinite worth? Is God ultimate preciousness? Not just, Does God become useful to me? but, Is God in himself infinite worth and value and preciousness?

I think if we don’t answer that question with a resounding yes, either explicitly or implicitly, our theology, our worship, and our obedience tend to go off the rails. Profound things are at stake here in the way we live, in the way we do ministry.

So, let’s look at some Scriptures to see whether or not we have biblical warrant for giving that resounding yes.

Matthew 13:44

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

If the kingdom of heaven is a precious treasure, it’s because the King is a treasure. Heaven will be heaven because God is there. That is the ultimate promise: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). That’s the consummation of the kingdom, and that is ultimately why the kingdom is a treasure. God is a treasure. God is infinite preciousness.

2 Corinthians 4:6–7

God . . . has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

The glory of God in the face of Christ is treasure in the jar of clay. The presence of God is the presence of infinite preciousness.

2 Peter 1:3–4

[By God’s] glory and excellence . . . [God] has granted to us his precious and very great promises.

The promises of God are precious, because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God, the presence of Christ. Here’s what I lay myself down to sleep with each night: “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10). The end and goal of all the promises is “live with him.” We know that “in [his] presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

1 Peter 1:18–19

You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

The blood of Jesus is not precious because it saved us. It saved us because it’s precious. And it’s precious because he’s precious.

1 Peter 2:4–6

You come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious. . . . It stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,     a cornerstone chosen and precious.”

This is God’s evaluation, not man’s: in God’s sight God the Son is precious.

Revelation 21:10–11

He . . . showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare [precious] jewel.

The glory of God filling the city is the city’s preciousness.

Revelation 5:12

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,to receive power and wealth and wisdom and mightand honor and glory and blessing!

To be sure, the creative power of the Lord and the saving deeds of the Lord are sometimes given as reasons for why we praise him as worthy. But oh, how artificial it would be, especially in view of this text, to abstract the deeds from the Person, and to say that his actions create his worthiness, rather than that his worthiness is being shown through his actions. No. No. “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain” means worthy is the Lamb, and therefore he was slain, and accomplished everything, because he is infinitely precious.

“The promises of God are precious because they ultimately hold out to us the presence of God.”

From these texts and many others, I can conclude infinite worth, and infinite value, and infinite preciousness are in God. God the Father enjoys God the Son as infinitely precious (1 Peter 2:4–6). Preciousness is in the Trinity. Preciousness is from eternity. It belongs to the nature of God.

Which brings us now to our fourth and final connection.

4. The Connection Between Preciousness and Pleasure

So, the first point was that one biblical facet of truth is that it refers to reality (not just statements about reality), and we are led by Scripture to see that there is an ultimate reality, ultimate Truth. Second, this ultimate reality is God. Absolute personal reality. “I am who I am.” Third, this God is infinite worth. He is in his very nature infinite preciousness.

Now, how does pleasure connect to this preciousness and bring about the triumph of truth? We see the answer when we ask the Bible, “What is the fitting response of a human soul to infinite preciousness?”
You decide what the answer is from four clusters of biblical texts.

Matthew and Hebrews

First, we go back to Matthew 13:44.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field [a very precious discovery], which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

The human response that correlates with treasure is joy. A joy that is so deep and comprehensive that it prompts one to happily lose everything to get the treasure — to get the preciousness.

Then we see this lived out in Hebrews 10:34 with a beautiful sacrifice of love:

You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one [more precious, more lasting].

And the human response that correlates with that more precious, more lasting possession was joy: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property.”

Philippians and Habakkuk

The second cluster of texts is from Philippians and Habakkuk. Twice in Philippians Paul says to rejoice: “Rejoice in the Lord” (Philippians 3:1), and then doubly, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Why is that so fitting? Why joy?

He answers in Philippians 3:8: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Joy in the Lord is fitting because the Lord has surpassing worth. He is infinitely precious.

He is more precious than food, and life itself, as Psalm 63:3 says, “Your steadfast love is better than life.” But this is most graphic in Habakkuk 3:17–18:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,     nor fruit be on the vines,the produce of the olive fail     and the fields yield no food,the flock be cut off from the fold     and there be no herd in the stalls,yet I will rejoice in the Lord;     I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

In other words, God himself is so precious in himself that when life has become impossible, and starvation is imminent, this man of God will rejoice. Because the proper and fitting response of the human soul to infinite preciousness is joy.

Hebrews and Psalms

The third cluster of texts is from Hebrews and Psalms. When Moses faced the choice of whether to remain in the riches and comforts and securities and pleasures of Pharaoh’s house, or lead God’s people through the wilderness at great cost to himself, here’s what happened in his soul according to Hebrews 11:25–26.

[Moses chose] rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

On the one hand I have pleasures, so goes Moses’s logic, in the land of Egypt that are fleeting. And on the other hand, I have greater wealth, greater preciousness, than all the treasures of Egypt, in the reward that is coming to me in the presence of God. The pleasures with God are greater and longer than the pleasures of Egypt, because God is a greater reward, a greater preciousness.

And David in Psalm 16 has no hesitancy to call our experiences in God’s presence pleasures.

My heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices. . . .

You make known to me the path of life;     in your presence there is fullness of joy;     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (verses 9, 11)

The gladness of the heart now is a foretaste of those pleasures, as we taste and see even now the preciousness of the Lord.

Matthew and 2 Thessalonians

The final cluster of texts to show us which human response is fitting to God’s preciousness are texts that call this response love, and bring us finally to the triumph of truth.

Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 10:37,

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

What makes this text so relevant and so radical is that the kind of love he’s talking about is not the kind of love we have for our enemies. This is not blessing those who curse us or doing good to those who hate us (Luke 6:27–28). This is the love we have for our children and our parents. It is the kind of love we have for those who are especially precious to us. To paraphrase: “Whoever loves their most precious human relationship more than Jesus is not worthy of him — won’t have him.”

We are not talking about peripheral or secondary or optional affections here. This is life and death. And the response that corresponds to the superior preciousness of God in Christ over our most precious human possessions and relations is love — the kind of love that finds greatest pleasure in the Beloved. The kind of love that says,

I love your commandments     above gold, above fine gold. (Psalm 119:127)

More to be desired are they than gold,     even much fine gold;sweeter also than honey     and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:10)

This is delight, enjoyment, pleasure. It is the fitting human counterpart to infinite preciousness.

Which brings us finally to a text that connects this pleasure with the triumph of truth.

Beloved Truth Is Triumphant Truth

In 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12 Paul is describing the final appearance of the lawless one whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth.

The coming of the lawless one is . . . with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth [the same kind of love we were just talking about] and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

They did not love the truth. They didn’t treasure the truth. They didn’t find pleasure in the truth as precious. And so, they did not believe the truth, but instead had pleasure in unrighteousness. “The truth” — here it is the word of truth, the gospel of the glory of Christ. This truth is to be loved supremely. We are to find supreme pleasure in the truth because it is the revelation of supreme preciousness.

When, in the final glorification of the saints, the bride of Christ experiences her supreme pleasure in the infinite preciousness that God is in Christ, then the supreme worth, the ultimate value, the infinite preciousness that God is will be fully exhibited in the new creation, and truth — ultimate reality, God himself, infinite preciousness — will be vindicated. Truth will triumph through the pleasure of God’s people in God. Not without it.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back on this Friday. Pastor John, back in June of 2021, here on the podcast, you gave us a personal update. And at the very end of that update, like a little footnote, you briefly mentioned that you were about to head off for a two-month writing leave to write a whole book about 2 Timothy 4:8 on the second coming of Christ. That was back in APJ 1641. In God’s kindness, the book you alluded to there got written, edited, and published, and is now out under the title Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ (Crossway, 2023). We’re going to look at that book over the next week or so on the podcast in four episodes of questions that I have for you.

First off, in this new book, what becomes pretty obvious to any reader is that you don’t spend too much time dwelling on wrong views of the end times. Your goal really was to clarify what actually happens when Christ returns and to celebrate it and encourage us to love his appearing. That’s the main theme of the book. But I wonder if you would be willing to take ten minutes or so on this episode to sketch for us some of the misconceptions — the blunders and the urban legends — about the second coming that you hope your book will help people to avoid in the future.

In general, I do think it’s right that we do the most good for the church with regard to the second coming when we don’t focus on distortions and misconceptions, but rather on the truth and the beauty of what it really is in the Bible. And yet, it’s right, now and then, to make our people understand there are misconceptions; there are errors.

Five Misconceptions

Frankly, I’m really happy that my book is viewed as being mainly proactive and positive rather than critical. But of course, even that positive view can be overstated. If we never focus on what’s wrong and show how harmful it is, we won’t really be biblical, because the biblical witness itself describes errors and their harmfulness — like Jesus did with the scribes and Pharisees or like Paul in exposing errors of false teaching in Colossians and other places.

So yes, I am willing to point out some misconceptions about the second coming. Let’s just take them one at a time, and I’ll try to explain why I think they’re a problem.

1. Christ will come after a golden age of Christendom.

First, I would mention the view that the second coming of Christ is far into the future. It will not happen until the kingdom of God is established as the ruling earthly power, including the Christianization of the cultures and societal structures of the earth. This is usually called postmillennialism, meaning that the second coming happens after (or post) the millennium. And the millennium in that view is understood to be an extended period in this age when the gospel has triumphed in such a way that a golden age of Christendom holds sway around the world and the powers of civil government, for example, are brought into the service of promoting Christian doctrine.

Now, I think this view does not adequately come to terms with both the teaching and the spirit of the New Testament that we are to live with a consciousness of the nearness of the coming of the Lord. I don’t think it comes to terms adequately with the teaching of the New Testament concerning this present age as lying “in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), or how Paul describes this age till Jesus comes as this “present evil age” (Galatians 1:4), or the statement in Hebrews that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14), or how the movement toward the end is described with a movement of greater evil, not less evil (2 Timothy 3:1–5). And practically, I think this view pushes the appearing of the Lord so far out into the distant future that it becomes inconsequential in the daily consciousness of the churches that embrace this view.

“There is no New Testament promise that the church, in this fallen age, will transform any given culture.”

And I think it skews the mission focus of the New Testament away from world evangelization and personal disciple-making and the process of sanctification. It reorients people’s passions onto culture transformation as a foregrounded goal rather than a possible secondary consequence of speaking truth and doing love to the glory of Christ. And the reason I say “a possible secondary consequence” is that the culture is not the report card of the church. There is no New Testament promise that the church, in this fallen age, will transform any given culture. It may. It has. And it may not. It is as likely in any given setting that martyrdom, not transformation, will be the effect of obedience. And when that happens, the church has not failed. Just read the book of Revelation. Martyrdom is not failure.

2. Christ has already come.

Second, there is a view of the second coming that basically says it’s already happened — for example, in the events of AD 70, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. It’s not a very common view, I admit, but in that view, the descriptions of his coming that sound globally visible and world-shaking and obvious were really just traditional apocalyptic language to say that the Lord comes in historical judgments in this age, and then he carries it out for the rest of the time — namely, his rule over the world through the church, with no expectation of any literal second coming at all.

And I don’t think the language of the New Testament that describes Christ coming can be reduced to symbolic statements of historical events like AD 70. Paul’s understanding of the second coming in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17 is that it involves the resurrection of all the Christians from the grave. That did not happen in AD 70 or at any time. It’s going to happen when the Lord’s appearing comes.

3. No events need to happen before Christ comes.

Third, I think it’s a mistake to say that there are no events that are yet to happen in history before the Lord comes. Second Thessalonians 2:1–12 describes an apostasy and the appearance of the “man of lawlessness.” And Paul gives these two realities as an answer to the question for those who thought that the day of the Lord was upon them. And he says, “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).

4. Christ will spare his people from the tribulation.

Fourth, perhaps the most common misconception of the second coming is that it happens, so to speak, in two stages. First, he comes and takes Christians out of the world and returns them to heaven with him while there’s a great tribulation on the earth. And then, after a short time, maybe seven years, he returns with his saints to establish his kingdom.

Now, that’s one misconception I do deal with in the book. I devote a whole chapter to it, in fact. So I’m not going to go into any detail here. It is probably the most common misconception, and people will be surprised. “Whoa, I didn’t know that was a misconception. That’s what I’ve always believed.” I grew up with this view. My dad held this view. I love my dad to death, to the day he died, and we got along just fine. But gradually I came to see that this view did not have the Bible on its side.

I think the primary danger of a view like this is not that it undermines any important doctrine (at least I’m not aware of anybody going off the rails in any fundamental way because they hold this view). But the danger is that it fosters the expectation that God will spare his people from suffering in the latter days. I think that’s a mistake. And it could be a harmful mistake if people lost their faith because suddenly they found themselves enduring end-time hardships that they thought they were going to escape.

“God’s own people experience some of the suffering of judgment, but we don’t experience it as punishment.”

First Peter 4:17 says, “It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” I think he’s showing in that statement that God’s own people, the apple of his eye, experience some of the suffering of judgment, but we don’t experience it as punishment. Christ took our punishment. We experience it as testing, proving, purifying us.

5. Christ will never come.

Finally, I think it’s a mistake to say what the skeptics did in 2 Peter 3:4: “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” In other words, it’s a serious mistake, Peter says, to think, “Well, it’s just been too long. Everything just goes on. He’s just not coming. It was all a myth.” That is a tragic mistake. And here is Peter’s response: “Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:8–9). Wow — what a response.

Love the Lord’s Appearing

So again, Tony, like I said at the beginning, I would much rather spend three hundred pages in a book meditating on the beauty and the power and the wonder of what’s really going to happen when the Lord comes than I would talking about mistakes. So that’s what I tried to do in the book. The aim isn’t mainly to correct errors. It’s mainly to help people love the Lord’s appearing.

In 2015, the Supreme Court (in Obergefell v. Hodges) voted to legalize so-called same-sex marriage in all fifty states. With this decision came the concept of “dignitary harm,” declaring the failure to affirm LGBTQ+ identity a damaging harm to those who define themselves by these letters. While the gospel of Jesus Christ affirms only one fundamental identity — male or female image-bearers of a holy God (Genesis 1:27) — the laws of the land declare that how you feel is now who you are.

In 2020, the Supreme Court (in Bostock v. Clayton) added LGBTQ+ to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, thus making that which God calls sin a protected civil right. This decision led to changes in Title 9, the landmark federal civil-rights law of 1972 that prohibited sex-based discrimination in government schools and sports programs. Americans live in a nation of redefined terms, including “sex,” which now means “gender identity.” This explains why it is legal for biological men to play women’s sports and undress in women’s locker rooms.

In 2021, the U.S. government, following Bostock and the redefined Title 9, promoted a federally mandated anti-bullying program for use in government schools — all of them. A “bully” is now someone who refuses to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ movement.

Such are the times in which we live. And we are tempted to believe that these cultural circumstances make us strangers and exiles in a world that once embraced our values. But that’s not the whole story.

What Makes Us Strangers?

Biblical giants such as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and others “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). When political dangers in a post-Christian society threaten loss of reputation, job, or even life, we are tempted to conclude that our pilgrim and exile status came through recent circumstances.

But that misses the all-important point: we are exiles and strangers not primarily by circumstance but by confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no doubt that the personal relationship believers have with Jesus Christ is our greatest comfort in this world — and the next one. But there is an additional side to our Christian witness that we must not neglect — the side that understands the ascended Christ sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Christ’s exaltation — his heavenly enthronement at God’s right hand — positions him as Head over all things, in fulfillment of the Great Commission, for the sake of his bride, the church, and the blessing of the world (Ephesians 1:22; Matthew 28:18).

Our station as exiles and strangers surely tests our faith. And this test may tempt us to take cover in one of two extremes: hiding with passive piety in private or fighting with worldly anger in public. The former elevates our personal relationship with our Lord and Savior over his state of exaltation (Psalm 2:10–12). The latter elevates the exaltation of Christ as King as something separate from the Great Commission.

Exiles with an Open Door

Practicing hospitality — loving strangers — is one vital way to bring together our personal relationship with Jesus with honoring him as King. We can practice hospitality with joy in a post-Christian society — and we must.

Where should we start?

1. Your Church

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

On many a Lord’s Day, you meet strangers at church, visitors who may have traveled a long way to arrive at the pew next to you. Get into the regular practice of having your house ready to provide spontaneous guests with a meal after church. The meal does not have to be elaborate. A short respite of fruit and snacks along with Christian fellowship and prayer is a welcome treat for weary travelers.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:1–2)

God commands us to show hospitality to strangers — a category that includes both believers and unbelievers — and he has set aside blessings for us when we obey. Who are the people in your church easy to neglect? Older and younger singles? Shut-ins? Young mothers? Work with your church to develop consistent opportunities for singles to be in your home, and together develop an outreach to those unable to leave their homes.

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

Often, we fall into grumbling when we feel that we are shouldering a hard task alone. Don’t practice hospitality alone. Have you considered organizing a regular Lord’s Day lunch after worship for all who wish to join? This can be done at the church building directly after worship, and if you do this every week, the routine becomes something that everyone looks forward to. Every household could simply bring a Crock-Pot with a favorite dish. Sharing the hospitality duties with others makes for more joy, less awkwardness, and no grumbling.

2. Your Neighborhood

For over a decade now, my husband and I have invited neighbors over for food and fellowship. Last year, we invited neighbors to join us in Christmas caroling. We delivered handmade cards and invited everyone on the block to come over before going out to sing. Over thirty people came, some even bringing extended family members from out of town.

“Hospitality is a command for a reason: it never fails to show Christian compassion to the stranger in need.”

We gathered in the house, and our associate pastor, Drew Poplin, delivered an evangelistic message, reading from Luke 2 and introducing Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners just like us. We prayed, distributed songbooks, and headed out the door. The children squealed in delight, ringing sleigh bells, forging ahead of the grown-ups to gather at open, welcoming doors. Accompanied by our pastor’s guitar and strong voice, we sang our hearts out, sometimes even in four-part harmony! When it was too dark to keep a careful eye on children and dogs, we returned to our house for coffee and cookies.

My new neighbor, Jacob, asked if I would hold his sleepy toddler, Jimmy, while he poured himself a cup of coffee. After some small talk about where they live, when they moved in, and general glee about the fun night we were all experiencing, Jacob said, “Hey, I read about you in the newspaper, and I have a question for you.”

I told him to ask me anything.

“You seem like a nice lady. So, why do you hate trans folks?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t hate anyone,” I replied. “I’m a Christian, and I truly love all of my neighbors. But I hate worldviews that lie to people about who we are — image-bearers of God. Because worldviews have consequences and bad ones have casualties, I hate transgender ideology.”

“Why?” Jacob inquired.

I shifted Jimmy on my hip and held him up, saying, “This is why. Jimmy is a boy, and I will defend his right to be a boy.”

Jacob nodded in complete agreement. It turns out that Jacob works in the school system, and he, a young white man, feels both the squeeze of political correctness and the threat of job loss.

“So why do you speak at school-board meetings when they hate you?” he asked.

“I believe that my job as a Christian is to restore truth to the public square. I worked on the bill that became the Parental Rights Law. I think parents have the right to protect their children and that enrolling a child in public schools does not make the school a co-parent.”

Jacob nodded his head and said that finding truth in the public square seems harder and harder. I introduced him to some of the other Christians in the neighborhood, also milling about the kitchen looking for coffee and cookies, and soon we had a lively discussion about parental rights underway, with phone numbers swapped and invitations to churches pouring out.

3. Your City

I’m a twenty-year veteran of homeschooling, but I care deeply about the Christians whose children are enrolled in the public school system for the simple reason that I am a Christian. We are called to let our reasonableness be known to all men (Philippians 4:5), and some of those men (and women) are on the school board.

Parental-rights laws across the nation have been hotly contested by school boards. Last year, I and others from local churches in Durham prepared three-minute speeches explaining and defending parental rights and responsibilities and the concerns we all had about the activist “science” behind transgenderism. Although these meetings are stressful, we stick around to talk to the people who oppose our message. “This is the world that Jesus came to save,” my 21-year-old son, who accompanies me to these meetings, often reminds me. We have found that people are people, and that all people need Christ.

Last year, we had the privilege of having dinner with a family whose gender-anxious and autistic son had been living a secret life as a girl at school. It took the parents two years to uncover the truth, and they were flabbergasted to realize that concealing this important information from them was legal under Title 9. They happily received our invitation to talk, and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. When the night arrived to host this family, we were delighted to discover that we shared many things in common. Throughout the dinner, the parents peppered us with questions about God: Who is he? Does he care about me? After dinner, my husband led in family devotions: Bible reading and prayer.

We learned that parents are often treated like the enemy by the transgender movement, and they — and their children — are in great need of the gospel. For many people who have been ferried down the transgender conveyor belt — traveling from social transition (false pronouns and clothes) to hormonal transition (cross-sex hormones) to surgical transition (genital mutilation) — the great promise of glory, of a new heaven and a new earth where souls and bodies of believers are reunited and glorified, is uniquely cherished. That family we invited to dinner after a school board meeting is now attending church, and their son is healing from the hurt of those years.

Hospitality is a command for a reason: it never fails to show Christian compassion to the stranger in need. Practicing hospitality in a post-Christian society loves the stranger while remembering that we too are strangers and exiles by confession and not merely circumstance.