Audio Transcript

It’s hard to confirm exact numbers, but by educated guess I would safely assume that the most asked-about chapter in the Bible in our emails here at APJ is Romans 9. I know without any exaggeration that we have hundreds of questions in the inbox on this one chapter alone. Within the chapter, Romans 9:22 is very likely the most asked-about text of all the other verses in the chapter. I know of at least 65 emails just asking about this single text, a hard text. Here’s one representative question from a listener named Leslie that captures the heart of dozens of those emails: “Pastor John, hello. I could use your help in my struggle with Romans 9:22. It seems to me to imply that those who are not elect are not even given a chance to repent since they were born for destruction. Is this right, that many people are created with no chance of ever being saved?”

I’m not surprised that Romans 9 is among the texts that people have the most questions about because my own history bore that out. Just recently, I’ve been perusing some of my old journal entries from 1977 to 1979. I was in my early thirties, and almost all of my discretionary time was spent studying and writing about Romans 9, especially Romans 9:14–23.

It may interest our listeners that this text — which highlights the absolute sovereignty of God over salvation as clearly, as forcefully, as any other text in the Bible and is therefore so problematic for most of us — was the text God used on December 14, 1979, to move me from being an academic theologian, who taught for 6 years in a college, to becoming a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, where I served for 33 years.

This text moved me to become a pastor with a longing that God would use me to save lost sinners from the cradle to the grave and to grow a strong church that would send hundreds of people to the unreached peoples of the world in world missions.

So I’m bearing witness that the most controversial chapter in the Bible with regard to the sovereignty of God in saving sinners was the chapter that God used to move me out of an academic dealing with the word of God into a frontline effort to save lost sinners, and to strengthen the church, and to reach the nations. That’s important.

“Nobody who humbly wants Christ as Savior is lost.”

It’s important because people think that if you believe in the absolute sovereignty of God over the salvation of sinners, then you would be disinclined to be a soul-winning pastor and a missions-driven church. That’s not true. It had the opposite effect on me — as it did on William Carey, John Paton, Adoniram Judson, and hundreds of other missionaries and pastors who laid down their lives to reach lost people with the gospel.

Bible-Saturated Pleas

There is such a thing as hyper-Calvinism, which is not historic Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism has always been a tiny group who have twisted the Bible by their unbiblical logic to say that the only people you should invite to Christ are those who give evidence of being among God’s elect. So if you are a hyper-Calvinist, you don’t share the gospel indiscriminately — like I do — but you wait and look for signs among unbelievers that they might be elect.

That’s absolutely wrong. It is not what Romans 9 teaches or implies. It is not what any other text in the Bible teaches or implies. The lover of God’s sovereignty who is saturated with a big, biblical view of God’s power in saving sinners says to every human being, without exception, words like these:

Come, everyone who thirsts,     come to the waters;and he who has no money,     come, buy and eat!Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,     and your labor for that which does not satisfy? (Isaiah 55:1–2)

In other words, we are pleading with them, “Come to the water of life. Drink freely, everyone! If you will receive Jesus Christ as the Son of God — crucified for sinners, risen from the dead — and put your trust in him as your only and precious Savior, you will receive with him everything that God has done through him. Everything that God is for you in him — you will have it all. Nothing good will be withheld from you. If you will have the Lord Jesus Christ, you have everything that he achieved, climaxing in everlasting joy in the presence of God.”

That’s what you say. If people will let you talk for a full minute like that, that’s what you say to every single human being.

Unpacking Paul

Now here are the words from Romans 9 that cause people to stumble. Let me say a word about them. Romans 9:18–19 says, “So then [God] has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault?’” In other words, we’re not asking a question that Paul didn’t ask. We shouldn’t be thinking, “I’ve got a question, Paul, that you never thought of.” No, you don’t.

Then Romans 9:19 continues like this: “For who can resist his will?” Paul did not say, “Well, everybody can resist his will. We all have free will. Everybody can resist his will.” That’s not the way he answered the question “Who can resist his will?”

Paul then says in Romans 9:20, “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” Now by that question, Paul did not mean we should never ask God questions. That’s not what he meant. He meant that you should never react with disapproval when God answers.

And he goes on,

Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory . . . (Romans 9:20–23)

Now, Leslie asks, “It seems to me to imply that those who are not elect are not even given a chance to repent, since they were born for destruction. Is this right, that many people are created with no chance of ever being saved?” That’s her question. My answer is no. That would not be a faithful, biblical way of stating the situation. Let me put beside each other two biblical truths that many people consider contradictory, but are not, and then I’ll draw out of those two truths an implication for Leslie’s statement.

His Sovereignty, Our Responsibility

The first truth is, from all eternity God has chosen from among the entire fallen, sinful humanity a people for himself — but not everyone. Thus, this selection is owing to no merit at all in those chosen people. God pursues their salvation not only by effectively achieving the atonement for their sin through Christ, but also by sovereignly overcoming all their rebellion and bringing them to saving faith.

Here’s the second truth: everyone who perishes and is finally lost and cut off from God perishes because of real, blameworthy self-exaltation, which is sin. Because they are hardened against the revelations of God’s power and glory in nature or in the gospel, no innocent people perish. Nobody who humbly wants Christ as Savior is lost. No one is judged or condemned for not knowing, or believing, or obeying a reality to which they had no access. All lostness and all judgment are owing to sin and rebellion against the revelation that we have.

“There will be no innocent people in hell, and there will be only forgiven sinners in heaven.”

What keeps those two truths from being contradictory is this: the moral accountability of man is not destroyed by the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation. To say it another way, God’s final and decisive governance of all things, including who comes to faith, is compatible with all humans being morally accountable to God for whether they believe or not.

Now, we live in a world that by and large refuses to embrace God’s purposeful sovereignty in all things. That is Ephesians 1:11: “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” People reject this largely because the only solution their minds can embrace for maintaining human accountability is the presumption of ultimate human self-determination, otherwise known as free will. But ultimate human self-determination is not found anywhere in the Bible — but God’s sovereignty is, and man’s accountability is. Nowhere are these considered contradictory.

Invited Every Day

Therefore, my response to Leslie’s statement — namely, “many people are created with no chance of ever being saved” — is to say that everyone is being wooed and invited by God every day. They are being wooed through natural revelation — the sun rising on the good and the evil, or the rain falling on the good and the bad — or through conscience, or through gospel truth. These revelations of God are their chance to be saved. It is a real invitation. It is real precisely because if they humbled themselves and received God’s grace, they would be saved.

Those who humble themselves and receive God’s grace know that it was only the sovereign grace of God that enabled them to believe. And those who don’t do it know that it is because of their own sin. That they loved something else more than God is why they didn’t believe. There will be no innocent people in hell, and there will be only forgiven sinners in heaven.

ABSTRACT: Reason and imagination are partners in the task of theology. If reason helps us speak precisely, distinguish carefully, and penetrate reality down to its principles, imagination embodies reason’s abstract formulations in order to press reality into our bones. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion is one such story that images theological concepts in stunningly fresh modes. As readers escape to Middle-earth, they encounter the distinction between God and creatures, the nature of evil, and the glory of God’s providence and grace in ways that complement the exactness of theological prose and make familiar truths feel new again.

For our ongoing series of feature articles by scholars for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Matt Crutchmer, assistant professor of theology at Bethlehem College & Seminary, to explain what J.R.R. Tolkien can teach students about theology.

Teaching undergraduates Christian doctrine is a joy. It is a joy because I get to spend time, year after year, thinking on and discussing our God, his gospel, and his world with his children — my brothers and sisters. It is also a joy because I get to be a witness to their fresh discovery of the truth, goodness, and beauty of this or that doctrine. This discovery is often rediscovery, or seeing the familiar anew. Many of my students were raised in Christian families and likely could pass an exam covering the basics of Christian theology. But knowing an answer to a test question is one thing; knowing reality down in one’s bones — joyfully resting in it — is quite another. For students to come to that sort of fresh knowledge, they often need to see familiar reality from a different angle. As C.S. Lewis knew so well, deep joy shows up by surprise, and I’ve learned that joy and its attendant surprise and delight aid one in learning Christian doctrine in this latter, deeper way.1

“Knowing an answer to a test question is one thing; knowing reality down in one’s bones is quite another.”

Those moments of real discovery, even if infrequent, occur by God’s grace as he instructs his people. One of the means God has often used in our courses to do that teaching has been reading outside the genre of theological prose. Specifically, I have for years assigned first semester students a section of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion in the course of our study of the doctrines of God and creation.

What’s my rationale here? My overall answer is that it is my job to teach students how to read. Primarily, this means teaching how to read well the Bible, specifically with an eye toward its theological logic, concepts, and coherence. It also means teaching how to read well a human life in light of what God says in Scripture. Accomplishing this requires, I have found, a combination of delight and embodiment.

Delight

First, I attempt this mode of teaching theology because it pleases me. Of course, this is simply another instance of the truth that unless the teacher enjoys what he teaches, his students will not enjoy it either. The world of Middle-earth feels like another home to me (I know its maps and geography almost as well as my native Oklahoma). Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn, and Eowyn are my friends and counselors and heroes with whom I wish I could sit at table. The longings and failures of the elves, dwarves, and men across the ages of Arda are ones I have felt keenly here. When the Ring is destroyed in Mount Doom, when Samwise hears the minstrels begin telling his own tale, when Aragorn is crowned king and Frodo sails away into the Undying Lands, I experience in my mind and heart the delight of that “sudden, joyous turn” that Tolkien labeled eucatastrophe.2 Reading Tolkien is reading the best of humanity’s fairy-stories, a genre Tolkien described like this:

It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium [“gospel”], giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.3

In a story such as The Lord of the Rings, I receive this sort of joy because in it I experience a story so much like the Christian gospel, the “true Myth.”4 Tolkien’s stories are often said to be tales readers wish were really true. For Tolkien, that simply echoes our longing — our hope — that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true as well: “There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true” than that of Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Son.5 So by reading Tolkien as a class, I and my students are delighted, and then by investigation come to see that our delight in it is actually delight for the True Myth that it reflects so imaginatively.

Embodiment

Second, I attempt this mode of theological instruction because our theology is by necessity, to use an unexpected term, embodied. This is the more important of the two rationales.

“Stories can concretely embody or enact the realities of God and his rule in ways theological prose often cannot.”

We read works of fiction in these doctrine courses not because they aim to teach us theology just as a book of dogmatics does. We do so because certain stories can concretely embody or enact the realities of God and his rule in ways theological prose often cannot. Note carefully the verbs embody and enact; I did not say explain. Since systematic theology has earned a bad reputation with some for its use of concepts — some of which are very abstract and seem quite different from or even contrary to the way the Bible speaks about God’s actions for us in time — it serves us when literature can make some of those concepts concrete and particular.

One of reason’s capacities is to penetrate the surface of things in the world and discover their natures and thus their causes (or “principles”).6 For example, when we read the story of the life of Jesus, doing so with good reading skills within the canon of Scripture, we come to understand that he is not simply human but is simultaneously, somehow, God the uncreated and infinite. We then find ways of describing this. We borrow the term “nature,” which has been used to describe the metaphysical reality of what makes a particular thing that kind of thing, and we say that in Jesus there are “two natures.” A nature or essence is an abstract concept, a bit removed from the seeable, hearable, touchable, smellable world in which Jesus lived and walked. We theologians then say that in the singular “person” of Jesus these two natures — the divine nature and our human nature — are “hypostatically united.”7 We claim that the principle of this Word becoming flesh is in God alone; we call it a “divine mission.” We then give this whole complex of claims a new Latinate name and say it is the “incarnation.” Every step toward precision seems to take another step away from the real world, from the concrete lives that we and our Lord Jesus have led.

Good theologians know that this “reduction to” or “analysis by” principles is not the goal. To summarize a claim from Oliver O’Donovan, reduction is meant to give us knowledge of natures and principles, but then we are to return to the concrete world with this knowledge and know the thing afresh.8 Theology’s concepts are there so that we can return to the world of things and know them better. In literature, Reason’s partner Imagination can then “body forth” in vivid characters, plot, settings, and narration those things that we strive to describe with our theological concepts and doctrinal statements.

The above explanation is part of a growing conviction I have about the practice of theology. I have a strong hunch that one generally cannot be intellectually affected — that is, grow in mind and heart — by a descriptive theological statement until one imagines a human person being concretely implicated in its truth. In other words, the movement from exegesis of Scripture can indeed yield true theological claims — a conceptual description of the resurrection at Christ’s second coming, say. Yet I believe that Christians who read that abstract, conceptual theological description will be moved to faith and worship by it only if they can picture themselves, their mothers, their children, their friends having a share in that bodily resurrection. Likewise for the precious, true, revealed abstract concepts like justification and sanctification. The abstractions and the living things are not in competition: they are complementary for us who are living things with complementary human capacities, reason and imagination.

Literature, whether Jesus’s parables, Nathan the prophet’s tale, or a modern fantasy novel like Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, presents us with an occasion for this sort of discovery of truth and meaning. Our efforts at reading (not reading into) the “theology” embedded in the author’s fictional world demand that we interpret a life lived, asking, for example, “What is the case in Frodo Baggins’s or Hannah Coulter’s or Ivan Ilych’s life? What is good there? How do we see God’s hand in how they make their ways through the days they are given?” This exercise then gives us as readers more skills in asking the same questions of our own lives: we learn to see how God is actually working in our lives, what are the real goods he has placed around us, what is really the case about our world — all tasks that good theology aids. Our personal lives do not have a prose explanation given with them, there legible on the surface of our daily events. Maturity and wisdom include growing in one’s ability to interpret life well, and the reading of literature can develop that maturity.

Theology in Middle-earth

I offer the following examples from Middle-earth with this qualification or caution: in reading Tolkien’s works this way, we must respect his own basic convictions about them. These were not allegorical or didactic stories, written expressly to “teach a lesson” or direct one’s attention to the primary thing that is outside the story itself.9 These works are “fairy-stories” in Tolkien’s robust sense of the term, and so meant not to teach a heavy-handed moral lesson, but to delight, draw in, and offer a way of “escape.”10

“Tolkien’s stories have a sympathetic resonance with, or have a family resemblance to, the gospel story.”

Nevertheless, they do indeed teach; they are indeed “about something” that good readers can come to see.11 Tolkien’s tales are the best of what he called “sub-creation,” a work of human hands that imitates our Lord as best as one can, imaging God in the delightful creation of a coherent, persuasive, compelling “other” world. In multiple letters, Tolkien makes clear that The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion are religious works despite religion’s near-total exclusion from them.12 He knew that we are to see the world in which we live through the lens of the grace of God in Christ, learning about God its Maker and Redeemer through it. His stories have a sympathetic resonance with, or have a family resemblance to, the gospel story. When we read them, our imagination works to connect the two worlds, but this is exactly the activity by which we come to find meaning in things (more generally?). That sort of discovery, with that work entailed, is sweeter and deeper than many other types of learning. By reading his stories in a theology course, we aim to experience just this.

God & Creatures

In The Silmarillion’s first two chapters, we are presented with a story about the creation of Middle-earth. While our minds are usually drawn first to the “music of the Ainur,” it is important to attend to their Maker. Here, we see that the Ainur — angelic beings — “were the offspring of his thought” and are “kindled . . . with the flame Imperishable.”13 These beings come to realize that they are singing a world into form. Though they do this, they themselves have their being from the thought of “Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar.”14 Following some of the most exquisite and even moving writing from the twentieth century, in which the Ainur’s song is lovingly described — a music in which they begin actually to see a vision of a world and its history — Ilúvatar fulfills the Ainur’s desires and speaks the cosmos into existence: “Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be!”15 Eä is the Quenya word (one of the languages of the Elves in Tolkien’s mythology) for both “the entire universe that is” and the verb “to be.” With this word, the world comes to exist.

The beauty of this brief narrative arrests the reader, drawing one’s attention to this New World as if it’s the most intricate miniature one could hope to find. Notice what has been built into this world, though: there is a Cause and Source for everything that is, except for one. Eru/Ilúvatar is simply there, without beginning or cause; everything else that exists (the powerful Ainu Melkor included) has been made, and made by him. They are creatures. His making of things — the Ainur or the world — seems effortless and immediate, having no raw material at hand for things to be. This is akin to what Christian theology has long confessed about God: that he is simple, eternal, causeless, whose life is well described as a se, meaning that it is “of or from himself.” Christian theology has also confessed that God would be himself even if he had not made the creation. Similarly, these characteristics, when set beside those of created beings, show us that one of the most fundamental realities of our existence is the Creator-creature distinction: God is qualitatively different from everything else.16 These unique characteristics of divinity play a role in much of the rest of this first part of The Silmarillion.

Nature of Evil

Immediately, Tolkien’s myth of creation turns to the rebellion of some of the creatures, portrayed luminously as one particular angelic being sings his own melody that breaks the harmony of the whole music of creation:

But as the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar; for he sought to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself. . . . Some of these [selfish] thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent.17

Tolkien’s language soars here, giving us readers a vivid picture of a crashing storm of sound, a braying cacophony that tries “in an endless wrath”18 to overpower the most beautiful polyphonic motet one could imagine. In about three pages, Tolkien portrays the nature of evil with more subtlety and insight than many theological writers have in hundreds.

What is evil? Evil is a departure from or perversion of the good of being as God has created it to be, in all its ordered justice. It is here not the freedom of agency and creativity per se that is evil, but using that capacity to act in a way that is “not in accord with the theme.”19 One expansive definition of sin as seen in Scripture is that of “lawlessness” (1 John 3:4).20 Melkor’s music is evil because it is contrary to or a perversion of the “law” of the music of the creation from Ilúvatar. It misses the mark of what the music is supposed to be.

Further, evil can include isolation, impatience, and sloth:

Melkor had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Ilúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness. Being alone, he had begun to conceive thoughts of his own unlike those of his brethren.21

Notice two parts to Melkor’s evil: he isolated himself and he was impatient. He did not think the other creatures were essential to his life, nor that he had to trust the wise timing of God. Evil always isolates: Gollum lives alone for five hundred years; Sauron brooks no rivals; Frodo is tempted toward leaving Sam behind. The converse is important: for a creature to act in harmony with the world God has created, the creature must be and act in relation to other creatures as well. The Ten Commandments contain two tables: the vertical by which we are to obey the law related to God; the horizontal by which we are to obey the law related to others. Such is the biblical nature of justice.

Further, Melkor wanted no span of time and output of effort to exist between his thoughts and their accomplishment: he wanted instantaneous and effortless results. The One Ring of the later tales is one more instance of this creaturely lust to have no gap, no loss, between a thought and its perfect effect in the real world. But such power is only God’s; only God is thus sovereign, because only God is thus perfect, simple Being. For Tolkien, magic and modern machinery are man’s attempt to wield this sort of power in an un-creaturely way in order to satisfy man’s sinful hastiness. By portraying a wicked power casting about for God’s own secret power, or the forging of a Ring that seeks to give Godlike power (invisibility, domination of the wills of others by one’s mere thoughts), these vivid tales help our imaginations to see not only biblical truth embodied in stunningly fresh modes, but also the meaning of our own desires, actions, and techniques.

Providence & Grace

Finally, this story teaches us about God’s providence and eternal plan for salvation. See how Ilúvatar responds to this cacophonous discord:

Ilúvatar arose, . . . and a third theme grew amid the confusion and it was unlike the others. For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched and it took to itself power and profundity. . . . [It was) deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. . . . Melkor’s music tried to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken in by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.22

The history of the world that God sovereignly ordained “takes in” the imaginations of evil and weaves them into its own music. The plan for history is not defeated by evil’s attempts to thwart it, but evil actually defeats itself. Note how Ilúvatar’s response at this point is a music that is as delicate as the skin of a newborn child, but one that grows and wins the victory not by sheer strength but through “immeasurable sorrow.” Few descriptions of the eternal plan for the gospel of Jesus Christ do more to move our hearts.

Finally, Ilúvatar explains the interplay like this:

Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. . . . And thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind and wilt perceive that they are but a part of the whole and tributary to its glory.23

What an insightful and powerful description of divine providence. Surely, the devil fooled himself into thinking that he could cause things that God does not foresee and intend, as if he were omniscient. Tolkien here masterfully contrasts the infinite wisdom, goodness, and power of God with the quite limited knowledge, desires, and power of even the mightiest of creatures.

Making sense of this scene in Tolkien’s masterpiece demands that readers think theologically, of course. But having briefly visited the beginnings of Arda or the road from Hobbiton to Mount Doom, the big payoff is in students’ ability to imagine God’s sovereignty, omniscience, providence, or even the nature of evil, however variably they might be manifested, in their own world. For this world itself was indeed spoken into existence to the delight of its Maker, and itself is the place where that Maker trod in human feet.

Armed with passwords and last year’s tax forms, we gathered at the dining room table with my youngest son and his new wife.

They had asked for help in the annual ritual of completing the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which college students must submit in order to qualify for scholarships of any type. Within minutes, however, the newlyweds were in the driver’s seat at the keyboard, clicking, scrolling, and entering data. I was happy to quietly excuse myself and move on to preparing snacks to fortify them for this blessed foray into independence.

Some parenting ties are easier to snip than others, and I’ll admit that this one was welcome. But the journey from dependent child to independent adult is never without its pulling and stretching on both sides. As young adult children relinquish their need for hands-on parenting and take up responsibility for their own lives, there is a mirrored relinquishment for which we, as their loving parents, usually need plenty of grace.

In the midst of this process, many mums worry that the mother-child relationship will be damaged as adult sons and daughters marry and start families of their own. We fear being replaced and forgotten when new family ties are established. Unfortunately, fear and worry are not helpful building materials for a bond that lasts. Mothers like me need help to embrace a biblical vision of motherhood that will enable us to work ourselves out of a job like missionaries, with gratitude for the gift of parenting and with joy in the launching and the letting go.

Holding Our Children Loosely

As a homeschooling mum who scheduled every minute of the day for my four sons, I stumbled at first with the choreography of letting go. Then, a seemingly unrelated principle from the teaching of Paul opened my eyes to a hidden idolatry, disguised as “good mothering.” In 2 Corinthians 9, Paul commends bountiful sowing and cheerful giving, a practice that demonstrates belief in God as both provider and sustainer. Giving strips money of its idolatrous power over our hearts, for we are saying, “I love God more than I love whatever this money could do for me.”

“Learning to hold my children loosely was step one in allowing God to take his own rightful place in my heart.”

I began to see that releasing my young adults and teens into their growing independence was one way to make war against that particular idolatry and the cherished illusion of control I had cultivated. Learning to hold my children loosely was step one in allowing God to take his own rightful place in my heart. And holding on tightly to God strengthened my belief that my children belonged to him first of all.

As loving mums, we balance our deep love for our children with a deeper trust in God’s loving and keeping, and, for me, this required stepping back from my idol of control, and then stepping joyfully into a new advisory role.

Stepping Back from Control

I realized when my boys were small that maintaining a relationship with them as they grew older was going to be a challenge, because I’m a do-er. When they needed help in the tub or someone to make them a sandwich, I knew exactly what to do. However, that physically dependent stage, when I was clipping forty fingernails and forty toenails besides my own, was (mercifully) short, and it didn’t seem long before our sons no longer needed my help or care.

Encouraging practical independence from mum and dad is a goal that sits alongside fostering spiritual dependence upon God, and conscientious parents can actually thwart that goal without even realizing it. Orchestrating every detail of your teen’s life, or swooping in to prevent every disappointment and to manage every outcome, can actually teach your children a false hope in success and happy circumstances. That’s a hope that will wear you out and leave your children utterly unprepared for the realities of adulthood.

As their dependence upon God grows, our adult children’s relationship with God may not look exactly like our own. Their mode of worship, their boundaries on gray areas, and the way they express their faith may not line up perfectly with what they learned in our home. In middle age, it’s tempting to define holiness as our own way of living the Christian life, with a dangerous shift in pronouns that redefines, “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16), with the parent as the standard for holiness.

Just as we look to Jesus Christ as the standard of holiness for our own life on this fallen ground — not our pastor, not our favorite worship leader or inspirational author — grace-dependent parents encourage our children to turn their eyes toward Christ and to follow his lead. We recognize that we are not the standard for holiness. We are followers of Christ alongside our adult children, and we trust him to establish habits of holiness in their lives as we set an example by our own practice of lively faith.

Our New Advisory Role

The prophet Jeremiah wrote words of wise advice to the nation of Israel in exile, wisdom that helped me find a peaceful bridge into my empty nest. Somehow, at first, I found myself standing alongside those poor, displaced Israelites, waiting for life to return to “normal.” Sadly, their wrong thinking — that Nebuchadnezzar would come, and in a few weeks they’d be back home again — had gotten in the way of their obedience in the moment.

“I am learning that it is possible to live out the will of God in a land I don’t quite understand yet.”

Jeremiah counseled against their camping mentality with instructions to build and to cultivate and to make a life in Babylon, a location that felt like a dislocation (Jeremiah 29:4–7). As the grieving nation came to realize, “No, we’re not going back,” they stumbled toward a right understanding of what it meant to be God’s people in a place they had no desire to be. Likewise, I am learning that it is just as possible to live out the will of God in a land I don’t quite understand yet.

Rather than languishing in unmet expectations, parents of adult children have the privilege of stepping into a new role. Suddenly, we can “seek the welfare of the city” in an advisory capacity (Jeremiah 29:7). Someone else is doing the hands-on budgeting, planning, building, and designing that accompany the parenting life. Our children are now the primary ones responsible for the welfare of the next generation.

In None Like Him, Jen Wilkin warns readers against the tendency to usurp the incommunicable attributes of God — those qualities of deity that are his alone. Nowhere is this more of a temptation for me than in parenting. God will stop at nothing to pour his holiness, justice, and patience into the love I have for my kids, but what I really covet is his sovereignty, his omniscience, his omnipresence. By entrusting each member of my family to God’s sovereign plan, I am enabled to release the death grip on my desire to control and manage life from my limited perspective.

Still Sowing, Still Growing

Returning to Paul’s metaphor of generous sowing (2 Corinthians 9:6–7), the biblical pattern for all of us is to spread our seed pell-mell. As empty nesters, we are in a position to put on display the generosity of the gospel and the nature of God by investing in multigenerational pursuits with our families, and also by shaping our demeanors and our schedules to communicate our openness to their needs and our willingness to put our own lives on hold to be available to them.

Not all the seeds we plant along the way will bear fruit — but, then, we learned when our children were younger that parenting is anything but a cause-and-effect proposition. It is not a vending machine into which we insert our right actions and are rewarded with equal and corresponding reactions from our children. We’re after faithfulness first, not results.

Everyone collects a few regrets along the way, but regrets can’t set the agenda for our parenting journey going forward. Our goal is to leave a legacy of godliness, not a monument to our own glory and success. Freedom comes with understanding that our family is not our own personal project. God is doing bigger and more glorious things that we may not see or understand. He is building his kingdom, and it will be our greatest joy to have raised a small band of worshipers to join those standing around his throne at the end of all things.

Of course, this means that I will never be a “parenting graduate.” For as long as I live, I will need to grow in grace so that I will honor boundaries, resist giving unsolicited advice, and steadfastly reject unrealistic expectations of my adult children. I will need to trust God to instill in my heart a genuine and unselfish love for my family that enables me to see their ever-expanding world as a gift rather than a threat.

By grace, we can balance our deep love for our children with the “expulsive power” of a deeper love for God and a deeper trust in his sovereign goodness at work in their lives.