The FOMO You Should Really Fear
These days, it seems like there are fewer things that unite us than divide us. But there is one thing we share in common: we all hate the thought of missing out. We hate the thought so much that we had to come up with an acronym to identify the feeling—FOMO. An acronym for Fear of Missing Out, FOMO is a shorthand way of expressing our fear of being forgotten or ignored. For example, for pastor-nerds like me, FOMO is the anxiety I get when I miss a big parachurch conference everyone’s posting and tweeting about. FOMO affects the places we go, the people we engage, the things we purchase, the media we consume—everything.
But what if I told you that FOMO is simply fear misplaced? And that missing out is actually a good thing for your spiritual life?
HOW MISSING OUT IS GOOD FOR YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE
To understand how missing out is actually a good thing for your spiritual life, we first have to know what the aim of spiritual life is. When someone places their faith in Christ, they are saved and called “to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:9; cf. 1 Thess. 4:7). For the Christian, their “new self” in Christ is to be characterized by holiness (Eph. 4:24). Remarkably, we have been graciously invited to “share in his holiness” (Heb. 12:10).
J.I. Packer has said, “The nature of holiness is transformation through consecration.” Two things happen when Christ makes us holy: we are transformed and consecrated. But transformed into what, exactly? And consecrated from what?
One of the undeniable implications of pursuing authentic, Christian holiness is doing without certain things—missing out on some of what we used to enjoy as we set aside ourselves for honorable use in the Kingdom (consecration), so that we can be transformed into the image of Christ (transformation). The apostle Peter explains that holiness is not only a personal transformation to a new self (1 Pet. 1:14-15) but also a communal consecration to a new people (1 Pet. 2:9).
FOMO is one of the most urgent holiness problems facing us today. It causes many of us to participate in things that belong to our old self or our old environment. We’re tempted to chalk it up to “sin nature.” We explain away our being “of the world” as really an attempt to be “in the world” for Christ. When we cave to the fear, it interrupts the process of our transformation.
The Christian’s life simply cannot look the same as it once did, but missing out on the things that caused us to sin before Christ is good. Missing out on the destructive things the world tells us we need is good.
THE FOMO YOU SHOULD REALLY FEAR
There is a FOMO that's far more haunting and serious. The worst FOMO of all is thinking that we’ve been living the Christian life when we haven’t. It can be startling, horrifying even, to read Jesus’ final words of warning in the Sermon on the Mount:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:21-23).
What greater horror is there than realizing you've bought the lie that new life in Christ means your life doesn’t have to look that much different? That salvation in Christ is only theoretical and not practical?
We’re all afraid to miss out on the next big thing or that cool experience everyone else is having. But these are simply misplaced fears. Instead, we should fear missing out on the Kingdom of God.
HOW TO KILL FOMO AND ENJOY MISSING OUT
How do we move past the temporal fears of missing out and start to enjoy the process of transformation Jesus is doing in us? Here are some ways we can kill FOMO.
Realize that being out of “the know” isn’t always a bad thing
None of us likes to feel uninformed. But I’m afraid we (myself included) are so immersed in the world’s happenings that we are hopelessly entangled in the “craving for controversy and for quarrels about words” (1 Tim. 6:4) that defines our daily news. This is one of the reasons social media and FOMO are so dangerous. We lament the hot-takes on Twitter yet we choose to throw ourselves into it every opportunity we get, doing the very thing we hate (Rom 7:15)! Start a routine of taking extended time away from social media or whatever puts FOMO in front of you. Doing so will refresh your soul and put out any growing fires of “envy, dissension, slander, and evil suspicions” in us (1 Tim. 6:4).
Fill the empty space
Just like removing fatty foods and sugary sodas from our diet and replacing them with healthy alternatives leads to physical health, choosing to miss out on what’s spiritually “unhealthy” and replacing it with what’s nourishing and strengthening will be to our long-term benefit. Imagine being more enraptured by the narrative of Scripture than, say, the latest episode of Game of Thrones. And imagine what it could do for your soul to make the switch.
Remember that your spiritual heroes did without
Do you admire the example of your lead pastor, an elder, your mentor, Charles Spurgeon, or another hero of the faith? Look closely and you’ll find that they have chosen to miss out on some things for the sake of Christian holiness. If they’re alive, ask them what steps they took to be in the world and not of it. Learn from their example. Ask for accountability. And ask what they gained in return.
IS IT WORTH IT?
When you do without, people notice. As mentioned above, we should not pursue holiness for the sake of people noticing us. But a natural byproduct of being set apart is being a city on a hill. This is most effective when in close proximity to people who get to experience our habits up close and personal, who get to see a transformation right before their eyes. And oftentimes, they want what you have.
In the end, missing out for the sake of Christ isn’t missing out at all. That’s because Jesus is satisfying and in his Kingdom, there is no missing out because there is no better place to be. Each of us will one day face the holy God of the universe and be called to account.
Until that day comes, I pray I won’t miss out on the riches of knowing him, following him, and sharing in his holiness in these days—even if that means I may miss out on something else.
Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.
Marriage Is Different—Not Better Than Singleness
The idol of marriage weighs most heavily in my heart when I am overwhelmed with life,stressed with work, or feeling lonely in my community, because in those moments it’s easy for me to believe that a husband would fix so many of my problems, that he would lighten the load I’m struggling to carry. And while there’s some sprinkling of truth in this belief because there’s a line between believing things would be different and believing it would be better. And this distinction, of marriage being a better option than singleness, harms the health of the church.
“People who are married might feel like they have to view marriage as superior to singleness, not just different from singleness, because they feel like they have to justify their marriages,” my friend Morgan says. “But what if they rushed into their marriages? What if there were impure motives or they were responding to family pressure and now regret it? Or they have doubts regarding their own marriage?”
If I’m doubting I made the right choice, it’s easier for me to make peace with myself if I can find the weaknesses in the other options I didn’t take. When I was at Liberty University my first year, I wondered if I chose the wrong college (because when you shove three eighteen-year-olds into a small dorm room and make them share a sink, one is forced to cling to the cross). There was a smaller school in my home state that I was constantly drawn back to when things at LU weren’t going well. In order to soothe my discontent, I would look up the other school online and criticize it in my mind: Look how small that gymnasium is. Can you imagine showering in there? I bet that girl is being paid to smile.
But here’s the thing—we don’t have to keep playing these roles. You don’t have to break down singleness in order to feel good about marriage. I don’t have to diminish the value of marriage in order to accept my single state. My happiness does not mitigate, or lessen, your happiness. And your identity is not a threat to my identity.
We don’t have to keep parading around marriages as the ultimate good in order to justify our undue emphasis on them. And for all of our efforts here, marriages are still falling apart. Abuse is still occurring within Christian homes, and divorces are still taking place. It seems that our idolization of marriages has done little to actually help them.
I want to share an e-mail with you from a male friend of mine who is married. He wrote it to provide a glimpse into the struggles of married life, to cut out the marriage PR. I hope that by reading it you’ll see what I see: that marriage comes with its own struggles. That marriage, like singleness, is different. It’s not better or worse; it’s a choice that can be made, a path that can be chosen, that has its own bumps and knocks along the way. And once all the flash is stripped away, it can be filled with suffering too.
The simple fact is, many, many Christians are unhappy and frustrated and even despairing in their marriages. But because of hang-ups or fear of how they’ll be viewed or financial reasons or just plain lying to themselves, they feel unable to do anything about it or get help for it. This makes it very difficult for them to create deeper relationships with single people, because it’s hard for a single person to understand that specific type of despair.
Marriage can be very ugly because it can make you feel like it takes some of the best parts of yourself and stomps all over them. It can turn perfectly good days into terrible ones because of stresses that have nothing to do with you and make no sense to you. It swallows your time and energy and effort. It can block you from things you’d like to pursue, ideas you’d like to try, risks you’d like to take.
I share this with you because it’s easy for singles to feel that they are on the outside looking in . . . lonely creatures peeking through the window into the warm, cozy lives of families. And that feeling is perfectly legitimate, because being intimately loved is certainly a wonderful thing, and it kills me that wonderful people like you aren’t having that experience.
But I think the other side is that sometimes (often!) married people feel as if they are the ones inside looking out: at freedom, and at opportunities for a loving relationship, and at a much more actualized life. They feel trapped in constant arguments, incredibly boring routines, financial inflexibility, constant judgment, and little to no hope that things will change. When they meet an attractive member of the opposite sex, they can’t spend time getting to know that person. When the opportunity for an adventure with friends comes up, it’s very difficult to make it happen because of the needs of the family. When the church needs money or help or volunteers, often one spouse is willing but the other is not.
I share these things because too many singles I know are hung up on the idea that marriage will somehow be better. And for some people, it is. But for some it is not. For me it is significantly harder. I wish I had known more.
Not all marriages are rosy bright, and I so appreciated my friend’s honesty in sharing this insight. As C. S. Lewis says, idols always break the hearts of their worshipers.[i] I’m not implying my friend is in this position because he worshiped his wife, but I am saying that marriage is hard enough already—why put even more pressure on that situation by setting it up for failure?
Perhaps the greatest rebuke to the idol of marriage is found in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” We all appreciate the support of family, and those who are married love theirs very much, but we must comparatively hate them. We must love them less than we love Christ. Our joy in these relationships must pale in comparison to, must be completely consumed in, our love of God. That’s what we’re called to here.
When dedication to one’s family is being praised from the pulpit as the highest virtue, we’ve missed something. And if we continue to emphasize saving and restoring marriages at the cost of ignoring or diminishing singleness, there will be very few marriages left to save.
[i] C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” Verber, http://www.verber.com/mark/xian/weight-of-glory.pdf.
Excerpt from Party of One: Truth, Longing, and the Subtle Art of Singleness. Used with permission.
Joy Beth Smith is the author of Party of One: Truth, Longing, and the Subtle Art of Singleness (Thomas Nelson). Find her on Twitter @JBsTwoCents
She Went from Destitute to Daughter—and So Can You
Before Cinderella was the most sought-after footwear model in all the land, she was a despised maid. She was a mistreated, neglected stepdaughter forced to tend to her bratty sisters. This part of Cinderella's story highlights something many of us struggle with: shame—particularly, the shame that comes from being shunned. Whether it’s a high school clique that keeps you from sitting at their table or an evil stepmother who treats you cruelly, no one wants to feel despised.
Cinderella’s story points us to an older, richer one that also features a destitute woman. This woman, whose name we don’t know, had a physical reminder of her isolation—a continual flow of blood.
PORTRAIT OF A DESTITUTE WOMAN
Her condition made her unclean in the Roman-era Jewish culture. According to Jewish law, every woman was considered unclean during the period of her menstruation. This meant that no one could touch them because they would also be made unclean. If the menstruating woman sat on a chair, it became unclean and nobody else could sit on it, or they would become unclean. This poor woman had a perpetual menstrual flow, so she was perpetually unclean.
Therefore, she would have likely lived separately from everyone. She couldn’t be touched by anyone. If she were a young woman when she contracted this condition, she would never have been able to be married or have a family. If it happened later in her life, after she had a family, she would never have been able to touch her children, hug them or comfort them in her arms, or even hold their little hands. This condition had ruined her life and she was desperate to be healed from it.
She had subjected herself to painful procedures with multiple doctors, yet she had only grown worse. Her humiliation, rejection, and degradation must have been completely devastating.
But that wasn’t the end of her story.
A SICK GIRL AND A DESTITUTE WOMAN
The poor woman’s story begins as an interruption to the narrative of Jairus and his sick daughter (Mark 5:21-24; 5:35-43), but the two stories are intertwined. Jairus’ daughter was twelve years old and the bleeding woman had suffered for twelve years, though both parties were desperate for healing. Jairus was the leader of the synagogue, a well-known and respected man. He acted as a powerful advocate for his daughter by pleading with Jesus for her life. The destitute woman had no one to advocate for her.
Even still, somewhere in her broken life a glimmer of hope still flickered. So desperate was she for healing, that on hearing of Jesus’s power and that he was passing through her town, she risked everything to go and touch him.
She would have had to cover her face and sneak out of her house. When she entered the crowd, she would have made everyone she touched unclean. Had she been discovered, she could have been stoned. But still, she pressed on and pressed in through the crowd, nearer and nearer to Jesus.
As Jesus walked to Jairus’ house to heal his child, the bleeding woman pushed her way through the crowd, reached out, and touched the hem of his robe.
Immediately, she was healed.
THE GOSPEL HEALS AND ADOPTS
As this healing is taking place, we can imagine Jairus is eager for Jesus to hurry up so he can come and heal his daughter. Jesus, however, takes his time with this woman, even while the young daughter's life is hanging in the balance. Jesus’ unhurried approach shows that God has equal time and power for all. No one is more important to him than anyone else.
The beauty of this story, which captures so much of the gospel, is that Jesus wills that no one should perish, but that all should come to eternal life (John 3:16-17; 1 Tim. 2:4). Here, Jesus stops in the middle of a lifesaving mission for an important man’s daughter and heals an unknown, nameless, rejected, and unclean woman. He healed not only her physical ailment but her deeper, spiritual ailment as well. And he accepted her in a way she had never even dreamed of by calling her “daughter” (Mark 5:34).
The gospel heals and adopts. It heals us of our spiritual ailment—sin—and adopts us into the family of God (see Eph. 1:5).
The love of God stretches infinitely; it reaches into the hearts and lives of every person despite their social status, nationality, income, gender, or renown (Gal. 3:28). This is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.
JESUS KNOWS YOUR NEED BETTER THAN YOU DO
The destitute woman’s faith was probably influenced by superstition. She had likely heard that some people believed Jesus to be the Messiah. There was a widely held belief at the time that if a person touched a tassel on the Messiah’s garment that person would be healed. Desperately holding onto this belief, the woman kept pressing in until she touched the clothes of Jesus.
And she was healed! This was all her dreams come true! All the suffering, all the doctors, all the years of isolation, rejection, and pain, came to an end the moment of her healing. As soon as she received healing for her greatest need, she turned to flee for home, intending to leave in obscurity. But Jesus had a different plan.
REDEEMED AS A DAUGHTER
Jesus understood the woman’s true need in a way she didn’t comprehend. And so, he calls her out of the crowd, saying, “Who touched me?” And she stopped.
Why didn’t she just keep running? Why did she stop and come back? Well, because it’s hard to run when the voice of God is calling you. The same voice that called Lazarus out of the grave called to this unknown, desperate woman, and at the sound of Jesus’s voice, she fell at his feet, trembling in fear, and told him the whole truth.
After she confesses, Jesus does something unheard of, yet wonderful—he reached down and touched her. The purest, most righteous man to have ever lived touched the unclean woman, claiming her as his own. The word “daughter” that Jesus uses here is a term of the most intimate endearment. It would never be used with a stranger. He uses it nowhere else in the gospels.
Jesus adopted this nameless woman into his family. He touched her uncleanness and called her precious daughter, and then he told her to go in peace.
When something dirty is touched by something clean, the clean thing becomes dirty. If you clean your car with a white rag, the rag will soon be black. Jesus took our “uncleanness,” to the cross with him. He became the dirty rag which washed us clean, and just like the woman in this story, he accepted us into his family.
While she had desperately wanted healing, and had thought that was her greatest need, Jesus knew the true needs of her life. He gave her public acceptance, healing, and peace. He called her “daughter.”
FLESH PRESSES, FAITH TOUCHES
This story shows us that God knows our needs better than we do. We may come to him imperfectly, as this woman did, not truly seeking to know him more but to lay hold of an answer to prayer. Yet he is still willing to accept us.
Augustine writes,
“Flesh presses, faith touches. He can always distinguish between the jostle of a curious mob and the agonized touch of a needy soul.”[1]
If your need is great enough to make you sincerely and desperately turn to God, if you, like this woman, will risk everything just to reach out and touch Jesus, he will meet your needs and more.
He will be your Savior. He will deliver you from your shame.
[1]Quoted from George Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to Mark, (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1927), 127.
Jody Ponce is on the women's ministry team in Calvary Cork, Ireland. She is married to Ricky Ponce, and she is the mother of three young children.
Trade Your Cinderblock for The Rock of Ages
“And by your grace, I will live for you.” I remember praying these words—but not meaning them. At the age of nineteen, my then-girlfriend led me to Christ and I renounced the atheism of my earlier years. Those words—“And by your grace, I will live for you”—were the conclusion to the “sinner’s prayer” that marked my conversion. Every sentence leading up to that one I said with gusto. But this sentence was choked out, forced.
Like so many “professions of faith,” I was parroting lines given to me by my evangelist. So after saying, “Amen,” I followed up with her: “I’m not sure I’m up for the ‘living for Jesus’ part.”
DIME-STORE DISCIPLESHIP
She replied: “It doesn’t mean you have to give up everything you love; you’ll just want to do them for God and not for yourself.” I shrugged. “I guess that makes sense.” But deep down, I was unconvinced. I played in a punk band and I was not willing to give that up, even though I knew our gimmick was at odds with the Christian life (our album title, “Menace to Sobriety,” was an appropriate summary of our message).
For the next three years, I tried a dime-store imitation of discipleship—Jesus as Savior, myself as lord. I wanted to make a deal: Jesus, you die for me, but I refuse to live for you. I didn’t give Jesus my life, just my afterlife. I wanted an afterlife free from suffering, but a life with all the pleasures sin could provide. The only problem with this bargain is that grace so cheap (to borrow a term from Bonhoeffer) is really no grace at all.
We cannot “baptize” our existing sinful desires by blessing them in the name of God. The drunkard who converts to Christianity and returns to his booze with gratitude, thanking God for this “gift,” is no convert at all. We need our distorted desires to be expunged by a more captivating desire for Christ. We need to understand both our sin and his love in order to become true followers of Christ.
THE RAT RACE OF IDOLATRY
Jesus used a striking illustration for the seriousness of causing others to sin. He said it’s actually better to have a millstone tied around your neck and go for a “swim” in the Mediterranean Sea (Mark 9:42)! He then gives us several other extreme examples about keeping ourselves from the things that keep us from God (Mark 9:43-50).
How seriously do you take your sin? Your sin—and make no mistake, any false god (idol) we serve is sin—is bound to drown you. Holding onto your sin is like trying to tread water while holding a cinderblock in your hands.
For the next three years, I tried to be the lord of my life while claiming to be a Christian, and the futility of idolatry became more and more clear to me. When we serve idols we become their slaves (John 8:34). I’d be happy, I told myself, if I could just play CBGBs. When that goal was realized, it never fulfilled, so I’d create a new one.
Entrusting myself to the idols I served—this is the rat race of idolatry. We exchange the true God for a lie and worship creation instead (Rom. 1:24) of Creator. This never leaves us satisfied (Jer. 2:13), not in the long run, yet we return to our overlords once again, expecting a different result. The cycle repeats ad infinitum. If it sounds like insanity, that’s because it is.
DISTORTED TASTES
The alcoholic knows his drink of choice is drowning him; he simply can’t slake the desires of his tongue with anything other than booze. The tongue wants what the tongue wants. We can’t simply starve our desires and expect to be satisfied.
To tire of our taste for sin, we need to acquire a taste for something new (Ps. 34:8). We need new tastes entirely, like the thirsty woman of Samaria who found Jesus so utterly satisfying to her palate that she dropped her water jug at the well (John 4:28). Our desire for lesser gods can only be overcome when a desire for the true God (Ps. 27:4) eclipses them.
We need something from outside to break that cycle if we’re ever going to be set free from slavery (John 8:32). Praise God that he has sent us the remedy to this terminal disease (Is. 53:5)! Jesus came to shake us out of the drunken, circular stupor of idolatry. He calls us to exchange the backbreaking burdens of our sinful idolatry for his life-giving, light yoke of discipleship (Matt. 11:30). He invites us to trade our taste for sin that never satisfies for his living water that never stops satisfying.
The functional saviors we cling to for life are, in actuality, no saviors at all. While they promise us deliverance, behind the veneer of power and pleasure, lies only death (Rom. 3:23). Like drowning men clutching cinderblocks, we hold on to our idols as they drag us to the bottom of the sea (Jonah 2:5).
Jesus stands there—a lifesaver!—but in order to grab onto him, we must let go of the cinderblocks. Otherwise, we perish.
A CINDERBLOCK-TAKING SAVIOR
The decision to follow Christ is costly and hard (Matt. 7:14), and should not be made lightly (Luke 14:28). We must be willing to exchange our ugly sin for the beauty of our Savior (Luke 14:33).
The good news is this: Jesus, while never yielding to the temptation to worship these false saviors, suffered the full brunt of the consequences for doing so. Though he never sinned (Heb. 4:15), he suffered on the cross for all of my sin (2 Cor. 5:21).
If the consequence for clinging to a cinderblock in the ocean is to drown, Jesus grabbed the cinderblock and held on until he breathed his last (Mark 15:37) so that we could breathe in the living God (John 20:22). The cross he bore, he bore for me.
Jesus is a patient, long-suffering, determined searcher of the lost sheep for which he came to die. The grace he offers is not cheap because it cost him his very life. Every drop of his precious, unblemished blood was required to make payment for sin.
My thirst for punk rock fame could only be put to death by understanding the depth of his love for me. He was thirsty (John 19:28) so that I never have to be (John 7:38). I don’t have to keep returning to a broken cistern; he is enough for me (Jer. 2:13).
THE BARGAIN OF GRACE
Once we begin to come to grips with how costly it was for Jesus to acquire us (Phil. 2:8), we gain a new perspective on how little we are actually giving up in return. When he calls us to pick up our cross and follow him (Luke 9:23), it is a call to death. But in putting ourselves to death, we are promised new life (Rom. 6:4)!
That new life is on the other side of the cross. If we want to follow him into glory, it means following him through pain and suffering. The way to Christ is the way of the cross. When I wanted to broker a deal with Jesus in which I gave him my afterlife but not my life, I wanted the ends without the means.[1] If we want to be glorified with Christ in the new heavens and earth, we must cling to him in the present. He promises us trials (John 16:33), but he promises to be with us (Matt. 28:20). He promises us persecution now (John 15:20) but paradise later (Rev. 2:7); The cross now (Luke 9:23) but crowns later (James 1:12).
Jesus is better; he is worth laying down our own sinful desires. The bargain Jesus offers us is better than the dime-store bargain of the devil. Satan tempts us, saying, “deny your maker and I will make you like him and give you this world” (Luke 4:5-7). Don’t trust the master liar (John 8:44); this deal is a sham.
TRADE YOUR CINDERBLOCK FOR THE ROCK OF AGES
Renounce your idols and all their cheap promises. Instead, follow Christ, who promises we will one day rule with him as his coheirs after we suffer with him (Rom. 8:17). Lay down your life, lest it slip through your fingers. Renounce everything you have, everything you worship that is not Christ, because he is better!
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:33)
Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the life-sucking cinderblocks; they’re all we’ve ever known, so we keep clinging to them even as we plunge toward the depths. But Christ is strong enough to lift these burdens off our back and give us his burden, instead.
His burden is the cross. The cross is death. But to die is gain because Christ is everything (Phil. 1:21).
Jesus, take these idols that drown us. Give us yourself, Jesus. You’re everything. We lay these cinderblocks down so we can be raised with the Rock of Ages.
[1]Note the emphasis on “knew you” in Matthew 7:23.
Sean Nolan (B.S. and M.A., Clarks Summit University) is the Family Life Pastor at Christ Fellowship Church in Forest Hill, Maryland. Prior to that, he served at a church plant in Troy, New York for seven years and taught Hermeneutics to ninth and tenth graders. He is married to Hannah and is raising an army of toddlers. He blogs at Family Life Pastor. You can read all of Sean’s articles here.
Hear God’s Voice and Encounter His Presence in Your Bible Reading
Tell me about the book you’re reading. You’re only a few words in, but you already know a fair bit about it. You know it’s about the Bible—the title is a bit of a giveaway. You might remember the author and publisher. You probably read the blurb on the back cover. Maybe you ran your eyes over the contents page. At some point you examined it—perhaps in the store when you bought it or when someone gave it to you. If you ordered it online, then maybe you read some customer reviews. You can see it and feel it. Some people like the smell of new books, so you may even have sniffed it . . . now most of you have. After you’ve read a couple of chapters you’ll have an idea whether you like it or not. And if you make it to the end, you’ll be able to tell other people about it in an informed way.
It’s easy to examine a book and find out about it. You can investigate it and interrogate it.
Now, I don’t want to alarm you, but there are almost certainly some bacteria on your book. If it’s any comfort, they were probably transferred onto the book (or e-reader) from your hands. Can you tell me about the bacteria on your book? That’s not so straightforward. You can’t see, hear or feel them. Hopefully you can’t smell them either, and I don’t recommend trying to taste them. Nevertheless, with a powerful microscope or some chemical tests, you could find out something about them. Like a book, they’re susceptible to scrutiny.
What about God? Tell me about God.
You might have all sorts of ideas about God. But what are they based on? You can’t see God through a telescope or under a microscope. You can’t go and knock on his door to ask him some questions. You can’t discover him in the jungle or on the ocean floor. He’s not like other subjects of study. He’s not susceptible to scrutiny.
For one thing, he’s a spirit. He has no body and therefore no physical presence. Even more significantly, he’s outside our universe. The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is the world’s largest machine and largest experiment feeding results into the largest network of computers. The irony of all these superlatives is that it’s designed to detect the smallest things we know about—subatomic particles. It’s detecting the aftereffects of particle collisions. But no apparatus could be constructed to “find” God, because God doesn’t exist within our material world. What would our experiment look for? In 2012 the Hadron Collider found evidence for the Higgs boson, a particle that had previously only been postulated. It was nicknamed “the God particle.” But it wasn’t a “piece” of God or evidence of his existence.
God is beyond our comprehension and outside our field of study. We might postulate his existence as the most likely explanation of effects we can see—things like the complexity of creation or answers to prayer. But we could never prove our hypothesis. We can’t stick God under a microscope or in a test tube.
So left to ourselves, we would remain totally in the dark when it comes to God. We have no way of bridging the gap between us and God.
So my request that you tell me about God should be an impossible task. The only way we can ever know anything about him is if he communicates to us. God himself must bridge the gap. We can’t study him. But maybe he can talk to us.
And God is not silent.
Knowing God is not completely without parallel in our world. Suppose I said, “Tell me about yourself.” Here’s a subject you do know something about. In fact, arguably you’re better informed on this topic than anyone else. The more you tell me about yourself, the more I’ll know about you.
But wait a moment. Do you really want to spill the beans to me? After all, we’ve only just met. It’s up to you what you tell me. How much I discover about your dreams, hopes, ideas, beliefs, desires, and plans all depends on how much you tell me. I can’t control what information comes my way. Only torturers can force information from people, and even then the reliability of that information is doubtful. In this sense the speaker is sovereign when we communicate.
It’s the same with God. We can know about him because he speaks to us. But God remains in control of the process. We talk about “grasping” an idea. But we don’t “grasp” God—not even when he reveals himself.
How does God talk to us? . . .
Let’s come back to the bacteria on your book. What would it take to ask them to get off? You could try saying, “Please get off my book.” Presumably the sound waves would reach them. But bacteria don’t have ears. Can they even sense sound waves? And even if they could, what language do they speak? Even if you could find a common language, do they know what a book is? In so many ways the gulf between you and your bacteria is too big to bridge. It’s a picture of the problem facing any attempt at communication between God and humanity.
And yet God in his greatness and grace does speak to us. In fact, he speaks in many different ways: in creation, in history, in the Bible, through preaching, and supremely through the person of his Son. People sometimes ask, “If God exists, why doesn’t he reveal himself more clearly?” But God is revealing himself all the time. The real question is, “Will you listen?”
Taken from Bible Matters by Tim Chester. Copyright (c) 2018 by Tim Chester. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Tim Chester is a pastor of Grace Church in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, and a faculty member with the Acts 29 Oak Hill Academy. He was previously research and policy director for Tearfund and tutor in missiology at Cliff College. Tim is the author of over thirty books, including The Message of Prayer, Closing the Window, Good News to the Poor, and A Meal with Jesus. Visit Tim’s website and read his blog or follow him on Twitter.
‘Spiritual Poverty’ is a Prerequisite to Discipleship
Our call to discipleship is founded in the Great Commission given to us by Jesus before he ascended in glory: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:16-20). The ongoing work of discipleship is to teach and demonstrate obedience to the commandments of Jesus, and the most concentrated collection of commandments we've received from him can be found in Matthew 5, 6, and 7—the Sermon on the Mount.
THE BEATITUDES AS INVITATION
The sermon begins with a collection of statements known as the Beatitudes, each beginning with the phrase, "Blessed are they . . ." Most Christians are so familiar with the Beatitudes that we forget how profoundly counterintuitive they are. Each assertion calls into question basic assumptions we hold about happiness, society, and even common sense.
It is helpful to look at the Beatitudes not as isolated statements, but as a progression of thought. It’s as if Jesus is giving us a whirlwind tour, a sneak preview, of the Kingdom of Heaven. Each beatitude represents a landmark, a step deeper into the Kingdom. We can see this because each beatitude begins with the phrase, "Blessed are they," except the final one, which starts this way: "Blessed are you." Jesus suddenly turns his eyes toward us and asks, "Are you in?"
The beatitudes are an invitation, a demonstration of what God's kingdom looks like on earth so we can decide in advance whether we are willing to accept the practical instructions—that is, commandments—given in the sermon that follows.
Take, for example, the first beatitude: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). We may not know what "poor in spirit" means, exactly, but nobody looks at the word "poor" and sees something positive. Poverty is always regarded as negative, and reasonably so.
WHAT, EXACTLY, DOES ‘POOR IN SPIRIT’ MEAN?
As the first beatitude, we can understand spiritual poverty as being the key that opens the gate to the kingdom of heaven, which is what Jesus says. Whatever spiritual poverty is, the observation of it is the first step to being a disciple and to making disciples. And if we are to teach others to observe spiritual poverty, we must understand and demonstrate it ourselves.
Fortunately, the lesson is not as cryptic as it might seem. In my experience, we tend to look at the word "poor" and say something like, "Well, I know being poor is bad, so when Jesus uses that word, he must mean something different than actually being poor." Misguided as that is, if we say that Jesus is not merely talking about physical poverty, we can at least pat ourselves on the back for being half-right.
Something that is spiritual can be understood as being, for lack of a better word, deeper than something that is physical. For example, I can force myself to show physical kindness toward someone without actually feeling kind toward him or her in my heart. But I can't feel kindness toward someone and then treat him or her with outward, physical contempt. The spiritual attitude is deeper than the physical expression.
So when we talk about spiritual poverty, we are talking about a form of poverty that is deeper than physical poverty. What, then, is poverty?
Poverty is characterized by obvious signs: hunger, exposure, uncertainty, vulnerability. The basic defining factor of poverty is lack of choice. For example, if I have $50 in my pocket, my options for lunch are far less limited than they would be if I had $1. Or, if I wanted to travel from New York to San Francisco, a $1,000 budget would afford me far more options than a $100 budget. The defining attribute of wealth is the freedom to choose. Interestingly, this is also the fundamental privilege on which our society is based. "So," Jesus seems to say, "let's tackle that first."
Imagine a malnourished child in a third-world country, holding his hands out to passing tourists. Why does he spend his time this way? Because he has no choice. Hunger and deprivation are his hell on earth, and each pastel shirt that passes is, in that moment, his possible savior.
Imagine a single mother who works three jobs. Why does she do this? Because the deprivation of her children is her personal hell, and a little bit of overtime pay is the only salvation she can see.
WHAT SPIRITUAL POVERTY MEANS FOR FOLLOWING JESUS
In the same way that those who experience physical poverty desperately seek after physical salvation, those who experience spiritual poverty are desperate for spiritual salvation. And when we recognize the source of that salvation, we are totally committed to obtaining it. What else can we do? How else should we spend our time?
In his gospel, the apostle John recounts the story of another sermon Jesus gave; a sermon so difficult in nature that the large crowd that had been following him scattered, discouraged, to their homes. When Jesus turned to ask his apostles whether they intended to leave as well, Peter replied, "Lord, to whom else shall we go?" (John 6:68).
Jesus demonstrates right away with his first beatitude that following him won't be easy or glamorous. Like a beggar desperate for food, each of us must come to Jesus with a spirit of poverty, knowing that salvation is what we need and that Jesus is the only one who offers it. If we could somehow fabricate salvation ourselves or obtain it through our own efforts, we wouldn't need Jesus—we could make our own rules, choose our own way. But sleepless nights and hours spent under the operating scalpel of Scripture have taught us that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one finds salvation except through him.
3 WAYS SPIRITUAL POVERTY INFORMS DISCIPLESHIP
This sense of personal spiritual poverty offers us three crucial insights for discipleship. First, it makes us sensitive to God's mercy. Unless God first extended his hand to us through his blessed Son, we would be lost to our Creator with no hope of reconciliation (Rom. 5:8). This keeps us humble and thankful, able to recognize God's continual grace in the midst of our circumstances.
Second, spiritual poverty leads us to keep our eyes open for those who are also desperate for salvation. We know what it's like to be spiritually destitute, and our hearts break for those who, in all the complexities of life, are experiencing a similar crisis (Matt. 11:28-30).
Finally, our poverty of spirit reminds us to have compassion for the lost rather than contempt. "There but for the grace of God go I." We all are found by God in the same condition, hopelessly wallowing in sin and helpless to save ourselves (see Ezekiel 16:1-8). We are keenly aware of how empty handed we were—we are—when coming to Jesus. What, indeed, did I have to offer him? My fear? My pride? My brokenness? I came to him with hands full of bloody rags, as do we all.
ARE YOU READY TO ADMIT YOUR POVERTY?
Spiritual poverty reminds us that the deep bonds of sin and darkness that hold the world captive are one arrogant thought away from claiming us as well. Without Jesus, there is simply no telling where my self-will, insecurity, and perversion might have taken me, and might still take me if God's mercies weren't new every morning. How, then, can we show contempt for anyone lost in sin?
With each beatitude, Jesus reveals more of the Kingdom of Heaven—that very present reality in which God's kingdom comes as His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Spiritual poverty is the key that opens the gate to that kingdom, placed in our empty and trembling hands by a Savior who wants us not only to enter, but to share the key with others as well.
Are you in?
Elliot Toman lives with his wife and four children in Kingston, New York, where he is an aspiring church planter. He spends his spare time studying the Bible, publishing comics and occasionally writing about the church and Christian life.
The Gospel Implications of The Golden Rule
"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12).
This is arguably the most famous passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and it is perhaps the only Bible verse you can still quote in a political or social setting without rejection or repercussion. Often called the “Golden Rule,” it is one of the few teachings of Jesus with which almost everyone agrees—at least on the surface.
Most would agree today that we should be thoughtful and considerate of others, maybe even practice “random acts of kindness” toward strangers. Tolerance—for every religion, lifestyle, and moral persuasion—is the god of our culture, and this verse is frequently quoted in order to encourage us to worship at her shrine.
Sadly, this widespread, warm-and-fuzzy reception to Jesus’ command is owed to how broadly it is misunderstood and misapplied. Consider at least three aspects of the Golden Rule that we often don’t bother to notice or to remember.
THE GOLDEN RULE IS BASED ON GOD’S CHARACTER
Matthew 7:12 begins with the word “So,” which points us back to the previous eleven verses and the motivation for this command. Jesus connects the Golden Rule with what comes before it, a two-fold lesson concerning the character of God. We are to practice the Golden Rule because God’s divine judgment teaches forbearance (vv. 1-6) and because God’s goodness teaches kindness (vv. 7-11).
In Matthew 7:1, Jesus instructs us to “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Clearly then, God’s divine and righteous judgment should lead us to honest self-examination and a realization of our own failures and faults. Whether or not you and I recognize the planks in our own eyes, God sees and will judge “impartially according to each one’s deeds” (1 Pet. 1:17).
Paul uses this same motivation when he instructs masters not to threaten their servants, “knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him” (Eph. 6:9). Christians—because we trust that we are forgiven through grace, and not our own merit—should be characterized by an acute awareness of own failings, not the failings of others.
Yet this lesson is a double-edged sword for any person wishing to wield it because it is forged in the fiery reality of God’s judgment, perhaps the single most offensive subject to any unbeliever.
It is true we should be willing to forbear, love and forgive others. But the reason we are to do this, Jesus intimates, is that God’s judgment will come on those who do not consider and act in accordance with his righteous character.
Then Jesus tells us to persevere in prayer rather than in faultfinding by continually asking, seeking, and knocking at the throne room of God. But what are we to be asking, seeking, and knocking for?
The parallel passage in Luke’s gospel shows the spiritual nature of God’s promise: “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). God promises God to those who ask! And so God—not bank accounts, promotions or even physical health—is to be the great object of our prayers.
Once you revamp the priorities of your prayer life according to that promise, the obvious question is: How will you apply the Golden Rule in your newly-renovated prayer life? Surely you will not be content any longer, in your prayers for others, to merely ask for financial success or personal happiness, when the Holy Spirit himself is promised to those who ask for him. No, the Golden Rule clearly corners you into spiritual prayers on behalf of others, as well as for yourself.
Be assured that the surest, fastest way to learn to love your aggravating spouse, wandering teenager, or persistent enemy is to pray for their spiritual well being! But it first requires the recognition that they need the moving of the triune God on their behalf in order to help them out of their current state.
This is not what most people think of when they say, “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” But in context, this is clearly what Jesus means.
Ultimately, Jesus is saying the second commandment hangs on the first. We are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind—humbled by his righteous judgment and looking to him for our every need—and thus we will discover the strength, motivation, and conviction to love others selflessly and sacrificially. And part of loving them like that will mean loving them enough to pray for their spiritual welfare. We will pray for them to be drawn irresistibly to God by his grace, and thereby transformed from unbelief to faith.
THE GOLDEN RULE IS POSITIVE AND COMPREHENSIVE
Jesus’ statement of the Golden Rule is positive, not merely negative: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” Confucius stated the negative version of this rule—don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you—and we often mistake this for Jesus’ words. But the negative version is much easier than Jesus’ command. Jesus tells us to actively be engaged in the lives of others for their welfare—which is why the same Jesus would then send his disciples out to the Great Commission.
If Jesus is indeed God, and if God is the one great object, center, and satisfaction to be found in the universe, then the Golden Rule demands we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to others no matter their religious background or personal perspective.
This is why Jesus’ statement is not only positive, but also comprehensive: “Whatever (literally, “everything”) you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” There is nothing you should be willing to pray for yourself, but not for others. There is no great and liberating truth you should embrace, but not share with others. It is in perfect accord, then, with the Golden Rule that Paul would say to a great assembly of pagans and idolaters, “I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am—except for these chains” (Acts 26:29).
The Golden Rule does not prohibit us from the offense of the gospel. Rather, the Golden Rule mandates personal evangelism, praying for and striving for the spiritual good of others, according to the reality that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
THE GOLDEN RULE IS LAW
The third aspect of the Golden Rule we miss so often is that it is Law. Jesus says himself in this verse: “This is the Law.” James would likewise affirm, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well” (Jas. 2:8). Paul pronounces that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8).
The Golden Rule is not a mere motto by which to live; it is a bedrock reality built into the cosmos, firmly grounded in the foundational reality that this universe has a Maker, that he is the God of the Bible, and that he has given us laws by which we are to live.
John Stott appropriately reminds us that “The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.” If we are saved, it isn’t because our good works outweigh our bad works. We are saved because Jesus fulfilled the demands of the law on our behalf.
The grace of the cross, then, should be displayed in the way we deal with and interact with others, as the Golden Rule reminds us. Our relationships, like our religion, should be symbolized by the cross (unconditional forgiveness), not the scales (carefully weighing and criticizing the misdeeds of others).
Yet the cross also reminds us that the only way to salvation is Jesus Christ. The Golden Rule—itself a part of the righteous law of God—points us to the reality that we can never save ourselves; that the only hope the world will ever have to escape God’s righteous judgment is the person and work of Christ on the cross.
Our very inability to truly love others as ourselves should drive us to Christ for strength, forgiveness, and healing—and to share this good news with others in direct proportion to the joy we ourselves have found in it.
Justin Huffman has pastored in the States for over 15 years, authored the “Daily Devotion” app (iTunes/Android) which now has over half a million downloads, and recently published a book with Day One: Grow: the Command to Ever-Expanding Joy. He has also written articles for For the Church, Servants of Grace, and Fathom Magazine. He blogs at justinhuffman.org.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ and Sex
The fact is that many Christians are in the midst of some kind of personal sexual struggle or dysfunction. They know theologically that Jesus died for their sins and that embedded in his death are the promises of forgiveness and freedom, but they simply do not know how to get from where they are to where they need to be. They know that the hope of defeating sin is the reason Jesus came, but sexual immorality isn’t just sin—you know, like lying or cheating. It’s different. It’s private. It’s shame-inducing. It’s just not something you talk about. In reality they stare at the empty cross of Jesus, and for them it seems that’s exactly what it is—empty. It’s empty of hope and help for them, so they live in silence. They minimize the depth of their struggle, and they determine that tomorrow they’ll do better. Or they’ve already given up and given in, and they hope that in the end Jesus will forgive them.
In a world that has gone sexually insane, we have to do better. We have to quit being silent. We have to help one another connect the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to sex and to sexual sin and struggle. The silence must be broken. Biblical hope must be given. People need to be called out of hiding. People need to believe and act as if change really is possible. More of us need to experience the forgiveness, freedom, hope, and courage of the gospel.
So let’s look at sex and sexual struggle through the hope-stimulating lens of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE ASHAMED THAT YOU'RE A SEXUAL BEING
We have to start here. The cross teaches us that sex is not a problem; it is a gift. Jesus didn’t suffer and die to free you from sex but to free you from sexual sin. You must never give way to cursing your sexuality, because the same One who wisely created your sexuality came to be your Savior. He didn’t come to fill you with guilt because you are sexual but to free you from your bondage to and guilt from sexual sin. Your sexuality points to his glory as Creator and to the amazing creature you are. It is something that the cross allows you to celebrate, because it is the grace of the cross that gives you the power to keep sex in its proper place in your heart and in your life.
Your problem and mine is not primarily that we are sexual beings; it’s primarily that we tend to love the creation more than the Creator so that we use God’s good gifts in ways they were not created to be used. Sexual sin and struggle are not first a matter of what we do with our body but a matter of what we do with our heart. The struggle for sexual purity is not so much a struggle with sex but with the proneness of our hearts to wander, that is, with the tendency of every sinner to look for fulfillment of heart where it cannot be found. As long as you are looking for life in the creation, you won’t be seeking it in the Creator. Sex is a good and beautiful thing, but desire for this good thing becomes a bad and dangerous thing when it becomes a heart-controlling thing. The idolatry of the sinful heart is the problem. So when you ask sex to satisfy you, you have to go back again and again because the satisfaction of sex is powerful but frighteningly short-lived. Remember that asking the creation to be your savior always ends in addiction of some kind.
You don’t have to be ashamed of your sexuality, but you must guard your heart as you live out your sexuality.
2. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DENY THAT YOU'RE A SINNER
So much of what propels personal and cultural sexual insanity is active, regular, long-term self-denial. Self-righteousness is simply insane itself, but it’s there in all of us. The grace of the cross of Jesus Christ means we don’t have to deny reality anymore. We don’t have to work to make ourselves and others think we are righteous. Grace means we do not have to be afraid of what will be uncovered or exposed about us, because whatever is revealed has already been fully covered by the blood of Jesus.
Facing the depth of your sexual struggle is possible because you do not face that struggle alone; your Savior is ever with you. You and I must remember that self-denial is never a doorway to personal change. The grace of Jesus Christ welcomes you to live in the courage of honesty, knowing that there is grace for every dark and dangerous thing that will be exposed. The way you deal with your struggle for sexual purity changes when you embrace the fact that grace means you don’t have to deny your struggle anymore. But there is one more point to be made here. The Bible never presents sexual sin as being of a different nature than other sins. Sexual sin may have different social and interpersonal consequences, but it is sin, no more no less. In Romans 1 sexual sin is listed along with envy, gossip, and deceit, even with something as mundane as disobedience to parents. That is why this is important. If you begin to think that sexual sin is sin of a different kind or nature, it is logical then to wonder if the same biblical promises, hopes, and provisions apply to it.
3. YOU DON'T HAVE TO HIDE IN GUILT AND FEAR
Hiding from someone whom you say you love is never a good sign. Hiding because of guilt and fear is a red flag that something has gone very wrong. Hiding a problem seldom leads to a solution for the problem. The cross of Jesus Christ welcomes you out of hiding, because on the cross Jesus endured your punishment, he carried your guilt, he bore your shame, and he endured your rejection. He did all this so that you wouldn’t have to hide from God. He did all this so that in your sin, weakness, and failure you could run toward a holy God and not away from him. He did all this so that you could live in the light and not lurk around in the darkness. He did all this so that you would find mercy and grace in your time of need. So step out of hiding and reach out for help. Your Savior endured the rejection you and I should have received so that even in our failure, we will never see God turn and walk away from us. Now, that’s grace!
4. YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT YOUR BATTLE ALONE
The dark secrecy of sexual sin can make you feel alienated, misunderstood, rejected, and alone. You can fall into thinking that no one will ever understand, that no one will ever want to be near you or help you. If you are God’s child, it is impossible for you to be alone. Let me make this distinction: it’s not impossible for you to feel alone, but it is impossible for you to be alone. You and I must distinguish between the power of what we feel and the realities that should shape the way we act and respond.
Here’s where the message of Scripture is so incredibly encouraging. God’s greatest gift to us is the gift of himself. What changes the whole ball game is his presence. The wisdom principles of Scripture wouldn’t be worth the paper they are printed on if it weren’t for the powerful rescuing and transforming presence of the Redeemer. Without him with us, for us, and in us, we wouldn’t understand the principles, we wouldn’t desire to live inside them, and we wouldn’t have the power to do so if we wanted to. Our hope for change is a person, the Lord Almighty.
God has also placed us in his church because he knows that our journey to sexual purity is a community project. We were not designed to know ourselves clearly, to identify the places where change is needed, and to fight for that change by ourselves. If you want to be sexually pure, you need people to help you see yourself in ways that sin blinds you to. If you want to gain ground, you need people who will confront you when you are rebelling and encourage you when you are weak. And most of all, you need people who will remind you again and again of the powerful presence of your Redeemer and the lavish provisions of his grace.
5. YOU DON'T HAVE TO QUESTION GOD'S PATIENT LOVE
Could there be any greater encouragement for us as we are confronted with the fickleness of our hearts, our weakness in the face of temptations, the rebellion that causes us to do what is wrong even when we know it is wrong, and the arrogance of thinking we know better than God, than the gospel declaration that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? God’s love is yours forever, not because you will be faithful but because he is. God’s love is constant, not because you earned it in your righteousness but because God knew it was the only hope for you in your unrighteousness. God’s love never wanes even when your allegiance to him does, because it is not based on your performance but on his character.
If you think that God’s love is at stake, that he will withdraw it when you mess up, then in your moment of failure you will run from him and not to him. But if you really believe in your deepest moment of sexual foolishness, weakness, failure, or rebellion that when you run to him, he will greet you with arms of redemptive love, then it makes no sense to hide from him or to separate yourself from his care. Ultimately, in your struggle with sex, your love for God is never your hope. Hope is to be found only ever in his love for you. Since he loves you, he wants what’s best for you and will work to defeat the enemies of your soul until the last enemy has been defeated and your struggle is no more.
You see, only the gospel of Jesus has the power to bring sanity to sexuality in a world gone crazy and, within this power, the potential for real, lasting, personal transformation. Yes, you can live a God-honoring sexual life in a world gone crazy. Yes, you really can.
Content taken from Sex in a Broken World: How Christ Redeems What Sin Distorts by Paul David Tripp, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
Paul David Tripp is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries, a nonprofit organization. He has been married for many years to Luella and they have four grown children. For more information and resources visit paultrippministries.org.
The Surprising Antidote to Your Doubt
Editor’s note: This month at GCD you will be seeing articles from our team of Staff Writers and other contributors on a handful of topics that Jonathan Edwards introduced in his own Resolutions. The aim of this series is to help you see how a gospel-formed resolution can help you flourish in your love for Christ and for others next year. Click here to see all articles in this series.
If you ever wonder how to get a bad rap with posterity, you need look no further than Jonathan Edwards, one of modernity’s favorite Puritan whipping boys. An 18th Century pastor, theologian, and missionary, Edwards has gained a negative reputation as the foremost of hellfire-and-brimstone preachers and the paragon of everything our culture finds faulty with religion. If it’s considered anathema today—like a repressive puritanical morality, an overemphasis on sin, guilt, and judgment, or a sadistic glorification of divine violence—it’s probably been pinned on Jonathan Edwards at some point.
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD?
My first exposure to Edwards came in high school literature with the assigned reading of his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Tackling the sermon as a read-aloud, our teacher prodded the class to preach with zeal: “Read it with passion! With fury in your eyes and fire in your belly!” His appeal to dramatic flair was mostly lost on a languid group of hormonal juniors, none of whom were eager to stand out amongst their peers. But the bias against Edwards—and the old-fashioned, bigoted, puritanical religion he represented—was clear.
In recent years, a popular backlash against “angry God” Christianity has risen not only from secular quarters but also from within the walls of the church. Consider a recent title from Brian Zahnd entitled Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, one in a long line of attempts to correct what is believed to be a backward and destructive theology and replace it with a non-violent, singularly loving, atonement-free gospel.[1]
For many of us, the appeal of a gratuitously loving God in the face of Edwards’ seemingly angry and bloodthirsty deity is irresistible. The angry, severe, cold god we grew up with has left us harboring neuroses too various to number. The god many of us have pictured from childhood was more like a domineering or demanding father than a gentle and loving friend. He reigned with an iron fist, rode on a heavenly cloud, and longed for a chance to exact vengeance on sinners and saints alike. This is a god whose stratospheric expectations left us cowering in fear, hopeless victims of his capricious anger and violent wrath.
But this portrayal of God is a gross caricature of Edwards and his theology. In contrast to this popular depiction, we might consider one of his seventy “Resolutions”:
“25. Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it."
We get a glimpse here of a young man—about 19 years old at the time of writing—enraptured by and devoted to God’s love. This might surprise anyone whose truncated impressions of Edwards have been informed by critics rather than a fair hearing of one of America’s greatest (and most warm-hearted) thinkers.
At root, Edwards had a comprehension of God’s love far richer and deeper than our modern understanding. The kind of love we expect and demand from God is lacking in anything negative, unattractive, or displeasurable. We desire a God who requires nothing of us, corrects nothing in us, and gives us everything we want. However, when we begin with ourselves and measure God by our own desires, we have a tendency to force him into a mold of our own making. We want a god that fits in our pocket—one we can take out when we want him, and put back when we’re through.
GOD’S WRATH MAKES HIS LOVE MORE BEAUTIFUL
But the God of Edwards—and, I would argue, of the Bible—doesn’t fit in our pocket. He neither exists nor acts primarily for our self-esteem. He acts for his own glory. And sin is, ultimately, an affront to that glory. The God with whom we have to deal is nothing like us. He is completely holy and requires absolute obedience. This is the God Edwards found in the Scriptures—the God who caused him to tremble and who is not to be trifled with.
It is only against the backdrop of the fierce wrath of God that divine love poured out on God’s enemies makes sense. Indeed, the central paradox of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is that “God hath had it on his heart to show to angels and men, both how excellent his love is, and also how terrible his wrath is.”[2] This theme of God’s patient kindness and love—a kindness that leads to repentance (Rom 2:4)—motivates and animates the entire sermon with Gospel power.
C.S. Lewis elucidated the relationship between wrath and love along a similar vein:
“I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay.”
THE SURPRISING ANTIDOTE TO DOUBT
In my own life, I have often struggled to accept God’s love for me. I've questioned how he could possibly love me, given my unworthiness and constant failure. I assume God foregoes actual affection for me and settles for mere tolerance. I feel like I'll end up sitting at the kids’ table at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.
All of this self-abnegation, of course, seems humble, but it's actually a false kind of humility undergirded by a pride that says: “God’s grace is not big enough for me. His love is not expansive enough to fully include me.” I think my sin—as heinous and wrath-deserving as it is—is more powerful than God’s justifying grace. But this kind of passive pride actually degrades the work of Christ and undermines a biblical understanding of grace.
And this is where Edwards’ twenty-fifth resolution helps me. When I doubt God’s love—a weakness the 19-year-old Edwards apparently shared with me—the place I am directed to look is to the wrath of God. Why? Because when I truly understand the wrath of God against his enemies, then I am able to truly understand my desperate place without God’s merciful intervention. It is only God’s unmerited favor and gracious pleasure—that is, his free and inscrutable love towards me—which is able to save.
And what does it save me from? According to the Scriptures, God’s love saves me from God’s wrath: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Rom 5:8-9).
HOW TO CONQUER DOUBT
Here is a profound and freeing truth: the love of God saves us from the wrath of God through the death of the Son of God. God’s love is excellent in itself, but it becomes exceptional and incomprehensible to human sinners in light of the wrath from which we are saved.
When you are prone to question God’s wrath or doubt his love, the antidote for both is to look to the cross, not as a place where God affirms your infinite worthiness, but as a place where he displays his infinite wrath against sin in concert with his infinite love for his fallen creation.
Whenever you doubt the love of God, look to the cross. For the cross is where God’s wrath is appeased, his love is displayed, and his enemies become his children.
[1] Derek Rishmawy offers a helpful (but long) review of Zahnd’s book here.
[2] Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” July 8, 1741.
Mike Phay serves as Lead Pastor at FBC Prineville (Oregon) and as an Affiliate Professor at Kilns College in Bend, OR. He has been married to Keri for 20 years and they have five amazing kids (Emma, Caleb, Halle, Maggie, and Daisy). He loves books and coffee, preferably at the same time.
What it Means to Invest in Eternity
Editor’s note: This month at GCD you will be seeing articles from our team of Staff Writers and other contributors on a handful of topics that Jonathan Edwards introduced in his own Resolutions. The aim of this series is to help you see how a gospel-formed resolution can help you flourish in your love for Christ and for others next year. Click here to see all articles in this series.
Before my husband was a pastor, he worked through seminary as a financial advisor in the mutual funds industry. In the early days of our marriage, he took a phone call that left a deep impression on us both.
A World War II veteran called to discuss his retirement funds. The caller hadn’t experienced an extraordinary career and had never made much money. What he had done was put away $25 every single month from the time he was eighteen. He shared with my husband that no matter what—even when times were lean and he had trouble making ends meet—he put away $25, and not one penny more.
Over time, that monthly $25 deposit grew and the interest increased exponentially, accumulating to well over a million dollars. At the time, as a man in his seventies, he was enjoying retirement in the late 1990s. He had no worries because he had been faithfully investing in his future for decades.
This veteran had an understanding few other investors have: he knew he had one chance to save for the future. He understood that if he was going to enjoy his old age without financial worry, he had a limited window to prepare.
INVESTING IN ETERNITY
The same can be said of our time. We all have limited time to invest in our future, and, just as the veteran knew he had one chance invest in his future, Christians have a limited window to invest in eternity.
The writer of Hebrews says, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). We have one life and one chance to prepare for life after death.
Paul tells us in Galatians that we are all heading toward a season of harvest: “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9).
In other words, we are sowing now but we'll reap soon. How do we appropriately prepare? If retirement calls for careful planning, how much more diligent should we be with eternity?
RESOLVING TO INVEST IN THE DISTANT FUTURE
Jonathan Edwards is a remarkable example of someone who wanted to be ready for eternity. Edwards strove to live well that he might bring glory to God and stand ready to meet him. Of the 70 resolutions he penned before the age of twenty, Resolution 22 speaks to Edwards’ desire to be ready for the life after this one:
Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can, with all the power; might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of.
“Happiness in the other world” was so important to Edwards that he resolved to pursue it with all his power and capability, and in any way that he could think of. But what is happiness in the other world? Rewards in heaven.
FULL VESSELS, VARYING CAPACITIES
Edwards, John Bunyan, and Charles Spurgeon all compared our happiness in the other world to full vessels. While every believer in Christ will be completely full of joy in heaven—like a vessel full to the brim—some vessels will be larger. Christians will have varying capacities for joy depending on how much our vessels were stretched in this life.
We know our good works in this life are not the grounds for our salvation. We could never obey our Lord enough to justify ourselves. Indeed, our bedrock is grace: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Eternity in heaven is a free gift, while our good works on earth are a confirmation of that gift. We desire to serve and please our Lord when we are inwardly changed. And the works we do in this lifetime will be rewarded accordingly in the next.
It is so easy to forget that each of our actions matter for eternity. But Jesus said, “I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works” (Rev. 2:23).
How quickly we drift from one distraction to another, serving ourselves, rather than the Lord or his people. Even in Edwards’ day, with arguably fewer distractions, he knew this.
Edwards recognized that Scripture is replete with the teaching that every person will “appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor. 5:10, see also 1 Cor. 4:5, Rom. 14:10-12, and 1 Cor. 3:12-15).
He heeded the warnings that while this life is temporal, the next one is eternal. Wisely, Edwards resolved to invest his efforts more in the distant future than in gratifying his immediate desires.
STRETCHING OUR VESSELS
While Christ is our primary treasure, he instructs us to seek treasure in heaven as well. Our good works are done by his grace and for his glory (1 Cor. 15:10). Therefore, it is for his glory and our own good that we pursue rewards in the life to come. The Bible tells us how we can do that:
- Deny ourselves (Matt. 16:24-27)
- Have compassion for the poor, crippled, lame, and blind (Luke 14:13-14)
- Love our enemies (Luke 6:35)
- Practice faithful and productive stewardship (1 Cor. 4:1-5, Matt. 25:14-23)
- Give sacrificially to the poor (Matt. 19:21)
- Have compassion on those in prison and endure trials (Heb. 10:34-36)
- Persevere under persecution for righteousness’ sake (Matt. 5:10-12)
- Do good works (Rom. 2:6-10)
- Work as to the Lord (Eph. 6:6-8)
THE FRUITS OF INVESTING IN ETERNITY
Knowing that “the other world” is forever and that there God will “repay man according to his work” (Proverbs 24:12), may we resolve with Edwards to endeavor to obtain for ourselves as much happiness there as we possibly can. May we exert all the power, might, vigor, and vehemence we are capable of, in any way that we can think of.
Let’s consider how God’s gifts in our lives may be used in service to him, for his glory and our good, both in this lifetime and in the one to come.
Just like that wise World War II veteran, we must be diligent in our pursuit of the future. We must invest now to enjoy the payoff later.
We are in a season of sowing and God urges us to consider how we might reap a bountiful harvest later. This lifetime is our only chance to reap happiness in the one to come. May we not waste it. May we resolve to carefully, consistently store away all that we can with all that we have.
Jen Oshman is a wife and mom to four daughters and has served as a missionary for 17 years on three continents. She currently resides in Colorado where she and her husband serve with Pioneers International, and she encourages her church-planting husband at Redemption Parker. Her passion is leading women into a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview. She writes at www.jenoshman.com.
The Importance of Enough
Our failure to fast from crass consumerism stems from our failure to say “Enough.” For those hooked on the drugs of materialism and consumption, there is no such thing as enough. Instead, our mantra is “More,” a command that by definition cannot be satisfied. Fasting from anything is a sign that we are denying “more” and saying “enough.”
But the reason we have trouble saying “enough” in the first place is because of the appetites of our flesh and desires of our heart: our spiritual senses. Just because we fast from things that do not satisfy our spiritual senses does not mean we have tamed our senses or that they somehow go into hibernation. In order to truly say “enough” we have to experience satisfaction of our spiritual senses. And the only satisfaction that truly satisfies is Jesus Christ himself.
In the middle of the Beatitudes we find this central tenet of the kingdom: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
This means that only God’s kingdom is broadcasting on the frequency to which our spiritual senses are tuned. Nothing else satisfies our inward groaning for righteousness. Psalm 42:1 speaks to this perfect fit, as David cries:
As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God.
We take that longing, however, and instead of seeing satisfaction in the living water of God, try out the toxic sludge of whatever is offered outside the kingdom. We see that verse and don’t see our means to assassinating idols but something nice to slap on a coffee mug below a picture of a deer and sell for $9.95 at the Christian bookstore.
This hunger and thirst for righteousness, this panting of our soul for water, is the seeking of our spiritual senses for a larger sense, for the completion of our longing, for the great metronome that has set the tick-tock of our insidest insides. In short, we are a spiritual instrument aching from artificial rhythms, aching for true Spiritual rhythms.
Fasting is one of these rhythms, a crucial one in fact, because it involves repenting from the weight of all that slows us down. Fasting is a rhythm in the same way not fasting is a rhythm. It is the way we live in service to something outside of ourselves. As we saw above, the big house isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but orienting your life around paying for, building, and maintaining a big house can be very often. We make sacrifices already, we are just making them for stuff. The rhythms of our life already portray our willingness to go without things like wise financial management, time to rest, anonymity, and even our health in order to get what we want. And those sacrifices are silly! All the rhythm of fasting asks us to do is sacrifice for better, permanent, more fulfilling things.
The late comedian George Carlin was an angry guy who mocked the very idea of God, but even he understood the superficial fulfillment of consumerism. One of his most famous routines involved the relation of the American dream to “stuff.” Carlin mused that we buy a home so that our stuff will fit in it, but then proceed to “need” a bigger home because our accumulation of stuff doesn’t end. “That’s all a house is,” he says, “a place to keep your stuff while you’re out getting more stuff.” Even the biggest house is not big enough to contain the fruit of conspicuous consumption.
Meanwhile Jesus draws near and—ready to rebuke materialism (Luke 12:33) and rescue the weary (Matthew 11:28)—he stands over us with arms outstretched, and to all of us moving to the rhythm of “more” he shouts, “Enough!”
FALSE FASTING
The temptation we face in reading the Beatitudes and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is to put on the behavioral expectations like a costume and play a religious part without undergoing any heart change at all, which is frankly how millions of Christians live their lives. Jesus himself calls us out on this when he speaks specifically on fasting in the Sermon:
And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:16-18)
Jesus warns against the behavioral alignment with the kingdom that lacks heart alignment. To act humble is not necessarily to be humble.
This is a powerful truth. When we skim it, it seems reasonable enough. None of us likes hypocritical people. None of us likes people who pretend to be something they’re not. And none of us wants to be those people. But the way Jesus commands humble fasting cuts right to the heart of pretense. He actually encourages “keeping up appearances” as a means of not keeping up appearances. Jesus tells those who fast to clean themselves up a bit. Fix your hair, shave, put on some deodorant. Why?
Because trying to look like you’re fasting is as fake as trying to look like you have it all together. The difference is not appearances but attitudes. The different is the heart.
If following Jesus is all an exercise for you in looking more spiritual, you will have missed the point. The whole point of abiding in Christ according to the rhythms of the kingdom is that life is found outside of your efforts and that the rhythms do not originate with you. You can study your Bible, pray, fast, give to charity, and go to church all you want, but if it is not the work of a heart for God, the prophet Isaiah calls it “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6 NIV).
The New Testament church at various times had to ward off the infiltration of a group of heretics called ascetics. (Paul’s letter to the Colossians, for instance, offers instruction in response to the threat of self-righteous asceticism.) Ascetics were those who abstained from certain food or drink, who disengaged from the wider culture, and who adopted rigorous religious disciplines in pursuit of transcendence, enlightenment, or holiness. The bottom line is that for these guys, fasting was the end, not a means to the end. Ascetics trusted their own works to merit salvation.
Joyful fasting is not about asceticism or performance, either to impress God or to impress others. Fasting is a posture. It is a posture of denial we take toward the consumer offerings of the world and of submission toward the loving care and provision of God.
TRUE FASTING
This kingdom rhythm is called “joyful fasting” because the true posture of self-denial is joy. If we are weaning ourselves off of the wares of the world, what do we draw worth from? Where do we place our hopes? What entertains our heart? If it’s not movies, television, the Web, food, drink, or shopping, I mean.
True fasting is joyful fasting for one primary reason: because it is worship of God.
One of the reasons we are tempted to let everyone know we’re fasting, to broadcast from the rooftops that we don’t have cable or that we only buy from Goodwill, is because we aren’t worshiping God so much as the religious admiration of others. False fasting stems even from pleasant hypocrisy and polite self-righteousness; it doesn’t have to be “mean” like the Pharisees’. But looking for the strength to fast from others’ admiration or approval or even our own good feeling and self-satisfaction over jobs well done will not work out. That well dries up. But a heart tuned to God, drawing strength from him, will have ample supply from which to self-deny. When fasting is an act of worship, practiced as a regular rhythm of life in Christ’s kingdom, the Spirit of worship sustains us, a peace that is beyond understanding overcomes us, and a joy unspeakable flows from us.
We do not live in a world where self-denial is encouraged. I have heard maturity defined as “the ability to delay gratification.” If this is true, consumer culture is itself immature and is designed to cultivate immaturity. A daily perusal of Twitter and Facebook updates reveals to me the complaints of friends and family (and myself) when the drive-thru line is long, when the lady in front of us at the checkout is digging in her purse for her billfold at the last second, when the airline doesn’t serve a meal on a lunchtime flight, when the DVR cut off the end of our favorite show. In none of these petty irritations over invented problems that don’t mean anything in the economy of eternity is there the pure joy found inside the “enough-ness” of the kingdom.
It is in this world of imaginary problems and required self-service that the cross of Christ is foolishness. Because the cross is the very emblem of self-denial, self-emptying, self-sacrifice. The cross is the polar opposite of heartfelt wrath felt over someone’s taking our parking space.
But the cross—the place of death and, thereby, life—is the symbol of kingdom fasting, of joyful fasting. The author of Hebrews frames it this way:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)
This passage tells us that Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him.” He did not see the sort of gratification in the cross many of us see in the golden arches or the little green mermaid (or whatever it is Starbucks has in their logo). He saw the gratification of joy beyond the cross, seeing the cross as the means to the gratification of renewed intimacy with the Father (“at the right hand of the throne of God”).
You will not be able to say “no thanks” to everything that belongs to the world if you are not already full, as Jesus was filled with the joy of communion with God. And to commune with God is to listen to him You will find it easier to fast joyfully if you are feasting on the revelation of his word.
Content taken from Supernatural Power for Everyday People: Experiencing God's Extraordinary Spirit in Your Ordinary Life by Jared Wilson, 
2018.
Jared C. Wilson is the Director of Content Strategy for Midwestern Seminary, managing editor of For The Church, and author of more than ten books, including Gospel Wakefulness, The Pastor’s Justification, and The Prodigal Church. You can follow him on Twitter.
The CSB Disciple’s Study Bible: A One-Stop Shop for All Things Discipleship
I had a radical conversion experience in the summer of 2002. Boy, was I jazzed about Jesus. I couldn’t wait to tell everyone the news—I was a Jesus-follower now! The problem was, outside of my salvation experience, I didn’t know much about Jesus or what it meant to be his disciple. To that point in my life, I knew more about following Rachel from Friends than Jesus of Nazareth. I didn’t need a little “tweaking” after conversion—I needed a whole new worldview. So I set out to rebuild my life from scratch, which was incredibly overwhelming.
Today, fifteen years later, I’ve grown a lot as a disciple (of Jesus that is, not Rachel Green). Yet I’ve often wished there had been a single resource handed to me after conversion to jumpstart my discipleship journey. This resource would be a simple guide on how to read, interpret, and apply the Bible, how to understand my story in light of God’s big story, and how to live out the habits of grace.
If only . . .
ENTER THE CSB DISCIPLE’S STUDY BIBLE
With the new CSB Disciple’s Study Bible, my hopes have come to fruition. This is a study Bible I’d happily hand to newly converted, “jazzed-for-Jesus-but-have-no-idea-what-it-means-to-be-a-disciple” Whitney.
Published by Holman Bible Publishers in 2017, the Disciple’s Study Bible is a one-stop shop for all things discipleship. It takes a fresh, reliable translation and pairs it with a wealth of discipleship resources to guide you on your discipleship journey, as well as equipping you with tools to disciple others.
Whether you’re a new believer who wants to rebuild your worldview or a mature Christian who actively disciples others, this Bible should be on your bookshelf. Here are six reasons why.
6 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD GET THE CSB DISCIPLE’S STUDY BIBLE
1. Faithful Bible Translation
The basis for a good study Bible has to be a clear, faithful translation of the text. No amount of resources, marketing, or cool graphics can (or should!) replace the text itself. The Disciple’s Study Bible features the Christian Standard Bible (CSB), a highly reliable and readable translation developed by 100+ scholars and published by Holman Bible Publishers. It uses optimal equivalence as its translation philosophy, translating the original text word-for-word when its meaning is clear, but opting for a more dynamic translation when meaning might be obscured for modern readers. It blends fidelity to the original text with readability for a modern world, making it an excellent translation choice for new and maturing disciples.
2. Achievable Reading Plan
Once you have a good translation, you need a plan to read it. There are fantastic reading plans available, but not everyone knows this. I didn’t. The beauty of the Disciple’s Study Bible is that a reading plan is built into the Bible itself, taking out any guesswork for new or busy readers. The Foundations 260 (or F260) Plan walks you through the big story of the Bible in 260 days worth of reading rather than covering every chapter of the Bible, lest you fall behind, get discouraged, and give up. It’s like a “best of” highlights reel that hits all the major points of redemptive history, giving you a sense of God’s redemptive narrative and where/how you fit into that storyline. This achievable “big picture” plan is perfect for new believers seeking to be shaped by God’s story instead of their past stories.
3. Simple Interpretative Method
This is my favorite piece. For every assigned reading, there’s a corresponding H.E.A.R. section that walks you through basic interpretive questions (e.g., who was the book originally written to, how does the text fit with the verses before and after it, what does it mean, in what ways does it call you to action, etc.). You highlight the verses that speak to you, explain what the passage means, apply what God’s saying, respond to what you’ve read, and—poof!—you’ve just done Bible interpretation without stressing over words like “hermeneutics.” The H.E.A.R. method teaches solid interpretative habits that will serve you well for the rest of your life. I didn’t learn this stuff until I went to Bible school; now, you can access it now in your personal devotions.
4. Accessible Book Introductions
Each book of the Bible features a short, accessible introduction; no academic or biblical background necessary. The introductions provide the circumstances of writing, contribution to the Bible, structure, and outline in a page or so. It also features a timeline for each book, placing the redemptive-historical events (boldface black print) within contemporary world events at the time (light gray print). It’s enough to get your bearings before you jump in, but not so much that you lose yourself in scholarly debates about Pauline authorship or the age of the earth. That stuff is important and fascinating to me now, but it would have turned me off as a new believer, undermining the whole purpose of getting into the Word.
5. Solid Study Notes
The study notes are arranged by key doctrines of the Christian faith. As you read commentary on a passage, you’ll encounter categories like creation, revelation, sin, evil, and salvation, thus offering you categories, or “buckets,” into which you can put your new biblical insight. These study notes also familiarize you with historic Christian beliefs and begin exposing you to systematic theology, an important discipline for all Christians. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t read like a stiff textbook. The emphasis is on discipleship and personal transformation. Additionally, the study notes make some of the key Christ-centered connections between the Old and New Testaments, showing how the Scriptures are all about Jesus. It comments on common messianic passages like Isaiah 53 and Ezekiel 36, but also on more obscure passages like Job 9:2.
6. Discipleship-Themed Articles
At the end, you’ll encounter a load of discipleship-themed resources from the team at Replicate Ministries, led by Robby Gallaty. These articles cover everything from how to pray and evangelize to how to establish a D-group (discipleship group). Of course, there are varying names for Christian practices like spiritual disciplines and small groups, but the core idea is the same—we want to make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus. These articles can help you towards that end. If you want to know more about Bible interpretation, turn to page 2034. If you need help sharing your story, turn to page 2041. If you’re considering starting a discipleship group, check out the article on page 2046. Even if you disagree on finer points in the articles, they’re a great resource to get you moving towards a life of discipleship. Again, I would have loved to have this in my hands right after conversion.
IS THIS BIBLE ONLY FOR NEW BELIEVERS?
The CSB Disciple’s Study Bible is great for new believers, but it’s also a fantastic resource for believers at every stage of the Christian life. I’m (obviously) excited about the value it has for new believers because I longed for something like this when I got saved. But don’t let my personal passion mislead you. If you want to grow as a disciple of Jesus, then this Bible is for you.
You could use it as your primary devotional Bible with the built-in reading plan, journaling, and memory work. It could also work well in small group settings; the H.E.A.R. method offers easy steps and questions everyone can follow. Some churches are even using it as a whole-church initiative to read the Word together and talk about it throughout the week. You’ve got options! It really is a full-orbed discipleship Bible.
Personally, I’ll be using it in the future as my “go-to” resource when I walk a new believer through the Bible. Just as I use different translations for different kinds of study, I find great value in having various study Bibles on hand for specific purposes. And, after reading and reviewing it, the CSB Disciple’s Study Bible just became my discipleship Bible.
WIN A FREE COPY
Our friends at LifeWay are generously giving away 5 free copies of the CSB Disciple's Study Bible. The giveaway will close next Wednesday, January 31 at 12:00 midnight EST. Winners will be contacted via email by Saturday, January 26, 2018. Enter below for your chance to win.
Whitney Woollard is a writer, speaker, and Bible teacher. She serves as a staff writer at Gospel-Centered Discipleship and contributes to various ministries, including YouVersion, 9Marks, and the Bible Project. She holds her M.A. in biblical and theological studies from Western Seminary and loves sharing her passion for the Word with others. She has been married to Neal for over ten years and together they serve Jesus at Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon. You can contact her at whitneywoollard.com.
The Bored Believer
It always amazes me when I get bored. After all, there is a great, big world out there and ninety-five percent of it remains unexplored by me. There are at least a hundred books waiting to be read on my bookshelf. My to-do list is never-ending. There are movies I haven’t seen, songs I haven’t listened to, people I haven’t visited, foods I haven’t tasted, and on and on. And yet, I get bored. With unlimited possibilities of ways to fill my time, how can I be bored? When I am bored, I do things that I don’t really want to do. I overeat, binge-watch TV, aimlessly scroll through social media, devour fiction on my kindle, and sleep too much. I get lazy and unmotivated. As a believer, I should make wise choices with the time I have. My time on earth is short, and I was created for a purpose (Jer. 29:11). God doesn’t intend for me to get bored.
Boredom is the state of being weary or restless due to lack of interest. As I think about what occupies my time, I wonder, Could it be that the things I’m interested in were not meant to hold my attention? Is this why I tire of them so easily? If I were interested in better things, would I find that I don’t get weary or restless?
BOREDOM LEADS TO WEARINESS
One result of boredom is that we get very tired. In seasons of prolonged work or long waiting, it’s easy to grow bored. The longer something takes to come to pass, the more susceptible we are to becoming disengaged.
Before his crucifixion, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus tells his disciples, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me” (Matt. 26:38). He separated himself from them to pray for a while, and found them sleeping when he returned. He admonished them for falling asleep and asked them to pray again. He left to pray alone and returned to find them sleeping again.
Despite the desperation of Christ’s words, “I’m sorrowful, even to death,” his followers were too tired to watch and pray with him. Perhaps they grew bored while waiting on Jesus to return and became sleepy.
God tells us to take courage when we wait for him (see Ps. 27:14). Why would he tell us we need courage to persevere as we wait? Because he knows, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). He knows we get bored when we wait and that boredom leads to weariness.
BOREDOM LEADS TO RESTLESSNESS
Another result of boredom is that we can get antsy. In the wait for a situation to be resolved, our boredom gives way to restlessness. We don’t know how to rest in Christ and wait for him. Instead, we pursue things to entertain or distract us to fill the time. We chase temporal pleasures.
When Moses went up the mountain to talk to the Lord, the people down below grew restless. “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, ‘Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him’ ” (Ex. 32:1).
Moses took too long to come down from the mountain, so the Israelites decided to find other gods to worship. They grew bored and needed something to occupy their time. So, in their restlessness, they made a golden calf to worship.
Our agitation can also lead to us pursuing quick fixes. Consider the childless Abraham and Sarah. God told Abraham (Gen. 15:4) that his very own son would be his heir. But as the years pass with no heir, they grew restless and took matters into their own hands. Sarah convinced Abraham to conceive a child with her servant, Hagar, and they would raise that child as their heir (Gen. 16:1-4).
We grow bored when God’s timeline differs from ours. We don’t like the feeling of helplessness as we wait for God. The more restless we become, the greater the temptation to try and fix the situation ourselves. Quick fixes are easy; they feed our self-sufficiency. It’s harder to trust and wait on God’s provision.
INTERESTS THAT WILL NEVER BORE US
We are fickle people with short attention spans. What we find interesting or exciting today may not even cross our minds tomorrow. We need better interests. A golden calf or an Ishmael will not hold our attention or our affections for long. On the contrary, Colossians 3:2 tells us, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
In The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis says,
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
God invites us into his family and there is nothing boring about being a child of the King! We are heirs of the kingdom (Rom. 8:17). As image bearers (Gen. 1:27), what interests our Father interests us. Russell Moore says in Onward, “If we are united with Christ, then his priorities become ours.”
This leads us to ask: What are our Father’s interests? What are his priorities? Believer, we must engage in the mission of making disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). We must care for orphans and widows (James 1:27). We must welcome refugees (Lev. 19:34). After all, we are kingdom ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20).
Remember who you belong to and your eternal purpose. We were created for more. Resist the temptation to grow bored by taking courage. God doesn’t want us to be weary and restless. We can endure as we look to Jesus. He gives us the energy to do our work and helps us to rest in the work he’s already done.
RUN AN INTERESTING RACE
The next time you get bored, take an inventory of your emotions. Are you restless or antsy? Pray for the Lord to direct your interests to the things that are meant to fulfill you for all eternity. Be engaged in those things with passion and intentionality. Look to Jesus for support and as an example.
“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” (Heb. 12:1-2). Let’s run an interesting race.
Christy Britton is a wife, homeschool mom of four biological sons, and soon-to-be mom of an adopted Ugandan daughter. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide. Her family is covenant members at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, N.C. She loves reading, discipleship, spending time in Africa, hospitality, and LSU football. She writes for various blogs including her own, www.beneedywell.com.
Even in Your Pain, the Church Needs You
For the body of Christ to be healthy we must depend on each part of the body. The church at Corinth seems to have demoralized those members whom they assumed were less gifted or hurting. Perhaps some of those struggling wondered whether they should even be regarded as part of the church body. Those of us who are hurting are reassured that the body has need of every part. Every part must play its role, or the body won’t function as well as it could. It would be ridiculous if our whole body were one nose. Not only would it be gross but it also couldn’t walk or talk. Every one of us is different, and that’s a good thing. We are not all good at the same things. In the sport of cricket, the best bowlers are not any more valuable than the best batsman. In baseball you need both hitters and pitchers to have a successful team. In both sports the elders have to play well. All have a part to play.
This is why we continue being in community with God’s people all the days of our lives. When one part of the body leaves the body, the whole body hurts. The church needs you! Individual members cannot contract out the work; they must do their role for the good of the body. Romans 12:5 says, “In Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Christianity is not a spectator sport. We don’t stay in the seats and watch other Christians get in the match. I recently watched all-time tennis greats Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal play in the Australian Open final. It may be the last time these two greats play one another in a major championship. It was incredible to watch these two rivals. But nothing compares with actually playing the game yourself. Watching is fun, but nothing beats getting out on the court and playing your best.
You may feel as if you have nothing to give others—you are in so much pain, your trial is tremendous. You get exhausted by just getting yourself ready in the morning. But one of the best things you can do as you struggle in your trials is to serve others. This is what you were made to do. God made you to play your part. You were not an accident. In 1 Corinthians 12:18, we see that “God arranged the members of the body.” He put them together. God makes no mistakes; he created you just the way he wanted to. There was no casualty in creation. You may not feel as if you can serve in the way you would like to, but you are important to the health of the church. Sam Allberry gives this illustration in his book on the church:
"Take a pen, a piece of paper and a timer. How many times can you write your name in 30 seconds? Now try the same exercise but without using your hands. You can put the pen between your toes or hold it in your mouth. My guess is, you didn’t do so well the second time round. Once you remove certain parts of the body, even simple tasks get harder. It reminds us of how much those with disability deserve our admiration. And it also reminds us of what our church misses out on when we are not there—part of the body is missing. Your church needs you."
When you reject Christ’s body, the whole church loses something. We need each other, and the wonderful fact is that the Lord has uniquely made you and can use you not in spite of your circumstances but because of your circumstances. This is a wonderful truth!
I’ve noticed that my nerve pain has given me a unique experience with chronic pain and disability that has allowed me to speak into people’s lives in profound ways. I had very little sympathy for others before I myself needed sympathy. Now I understand (at least a little bit more than I used to) the physical and emotional pain that comes with failing health. But what if I steered clear of the rest of Christ’s body? What if I saw my trial as a parenthesis or break in my church involvement and distanced myself from God’s people for a time? I would miss out on God using me. Hurting friend, God can use you in extraordinary ways. God has sovereignly ordained to use hurting people to comfort other hurting people. Paul writes:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2 Cor. 1:3–4).
Being unhealthy or struggling with some trial shouldn’t cause you to stop your church involvement. You shouldn’t think that you’ll get involved once you’re healthy. The church needs you now. I love seeing how one of our church members, Sneha, deals with extreme physical pain and yet works hard to join us for corporate worship even when she doesn’t feel well. Sneha understands that she needs the church now more than ever. And she’s a blessing to us. Even when she’s writhing in pain in her apartment, she will call church members to encourage and pray for them. Ladies will come to her apartment so that she can teach them the Bible. That’s what Paul is talking about when he says God comforts us so we can comfort others. The reassuring thing for those who are hurting is that God doesn’t cast us aside in our trials, but he is actually preparing us to be used in ways beyond what we could even imagine. Paul continues:
"The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together" (1 Cor. 12:21–26).
This is great news! Even when we are hurting and we may be weaker than the other parts, God uses us. Even when we may feel like we have nothing to give, what does Paul say to us? He says all parts are indispensable. Hurting friend, you are indispensable in the plan of God! The word weaker in this context actually has the idea of being sick. The meaning emphasizes the complete unimportance of the member. But Paul says, “We need those members!” The body of Christ can’t do without them. Paul writes that those parts actually deserve greater honor. It seems counterintuitive, but in God’s grand design, your trial might be the moment of your most significant ministry. Could that be the case in your life right now?
Content taken from Kiss the Wave: Embracing God in Your Trials by Dave Furman, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.
Start Planning Your Own Funeral
Editor’s note: This month at GCD you will be seeing articles from our team of Staff Writers and other contributors on a handful of topics that Jonathan Edwards introduced in his own Resolutions. The aim of this series is to help you see how a gospel-formed resolution can help you flourish in your love for Christ and for others next year. Click here to see all articles in this series.
Marilyn Johnson starts every morning the same way. She arranges her cup of tea, props up her slippers, shakes out the pages of The New York Times, and reads the obituaries.
Why the obituaries? “Obituaries, as anyone who reads or writes obituaries will tell you, are really not about death,” she says.
While obituaries explain the circumstances of a person’s death, they spend much more time explaining how they lived, making them a fantastic way to learn about life.
Another daily obit reader, artist Maira Kalman, muses, “[When I read obituaries,] I’m trying to figure out two very simple things: how to live, and how to die.”
These artists, as well as many others throughout history, have stumbled on one of the most ancient practices of obtaining wisdom for life—thinking about death.
TEACH US TO NUMBER OUR DAYS
Moses, the towering Old Testament figure, is perhaps most famous for the Exodus—the episode recording his faithful obedience to God, who commissioned Moses to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt.
Moses’ 120 years of life (see Deut. 34:7) included an unbelievable range of experiences: being raised in Pharaoh’s house, killing a man, running away from his people and living in hiding, coming back to lead God’s people out of slavery, seeing the Red Sea part before his eyes, almost making it to the Promised Land, being forced to wander around the desert for 40 years, then being prevented from entering that Promised Land.
People who have lived long lives are worth learning from, if for no other reason than they have simply experienced more than we have. In Moses’ case, his faithful example and leadership make him even more interesting to study, which is why we should take seriously his prayer for wisdom recorded in Psalm 90 (we should pay even closer attention when considering his words were inspired by the Spirit of God).
In verse 12, Moses voices a collective prayer for the people of God, saying, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
According to Moses, the key to a heart of wisdom is in learning to number our days. Put another way, the key to wisdom for life is thinking about death. As we consider how few our days are, we begin to develop a heart of wisdom.
GO TO THE HOUSE OF MOURNING
Moses is really saying the same thing as the rest of Scripture. In some of the oddest-sounding sections of the Bible, Solomon writes, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart" (Eccles. 7:2).
Yes, Solomon said it is better to go to a funeral than a wedding. Why? Because the house of mourning is the end of all mankind—it’s where each of us is headed—and those who recognize this fact will reflect on how they spend their days. Funerals aren’t better than weddings in general; Solomon is saying that funerals are better than weddings for obtaining wisdom.
He then clarifies, saying, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth” (Eccles. 7:4). Solomon—the wisest man to ever live (see 1 Kings 3:12)—tells us that wisdom for life is found in pondering death.
We shouldn’t move on from death too quickly, going from the house of mourning to the house of mirth, either, because thinking about the brevity of life is the key to finding wisdom. Most of us are ready to go parties or receptions after someone’s funeral, but perhaps we would be better off to sit at the graveside a bit longer.
OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED
How exactly does thinking about death make us better at living? Let’s turn to David, another psalmist worth learning from.
David struggled with how to live a life that honored God while being surrounded by those who denounced and demeaned him. How could he live for God when the wicked seemed to receive nothing but good fortune for their evil? How could he make sense of it all?
By thinking about the brevity of life.
Out of his turmoil, David wrote, “O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Ps. 39:4).
The way out of his thinking about the futility of life was in seeing his life in light of eternity. To live each day well, he had to reflect on how few of those days he had left.
David, Solomon, and Moses all realized that thinking about death helps us make better decisions for life. Similarly, Francis Chan writes:
“[We] make wiser decisions after our hearts spend time in the house of mourning. I tend to make good decisions at funerals and poor ones in restaurants. I have made wise financial decisions while surrounded by starving children, and poor decisions from the suburbs. We need to keep our hearts close to the house of mourning to avoid decisions we will regret. As difficult as it is, we need to be mindful of death. We must make decisions with our day of death in mind.”
START PLANNING YOUR FUNERAL
Jonathan Edwards is known for his famous resolutions—short promises he made to help keep himself on the path of righteousness. His ninth resolution reads, “Resolved, To think much, on all occasions, of my dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.”
He was resolved to think about his death and the normal circumstances it would bring. That means Edwards was resolved to plan his own funeral in his mind.
His example is one we can follow. Try this short exercise: for 10 minutes today, think through the reality that you will die. Reflect on all that thought brings, from death certificates to funeral plans and coffin choices.
Remind yourself that in Christ “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28); that your next breath comes only if he allows it. Imagine you will die tomorrow, next week, or next year.
Then, ask yourself questions like, “If I were about to die…”
“What would I do differently? What would I start doing? What would I stop doing?”
“Would I keep living the way I am—living where I live, doing the things I do, working the job I have?”
“What would I be ashamed of not attempting for God?”
“Who would I spend more time with?”
Surely, God will bring some things into focus, namely that we should live today like we’ll die tomorrow.
Resolve to think about your death more often. Resolve to plan your own funeral every now and then, at least in your mind.
WHY THINKING ABOUT DEATH SHOULDN’T SCARE YOU
Thinking about your own death sounds a bit morbid, at first (certainly, planning your own funeral does!). But what Edwards and others have seen is that in ruminating over our death we obtain wisdom for our life.
Are men and women who think about death more emotionally robust than the rest of us? Are they of some strange, macabre mold?
Perhaps, but I doubt it. Instead, they seem to understand what Paul put so memorably, that “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). As believers, we have the opportunity to live for Christ today.
We get to love his church, love his people, and tell others the greatest news ever heard. Our eternal, heavenly life informs our ephemeral, worldly life. That heavenly life is an eternal one alongside Christ himself!
Death might frighten us because it’s unknown—but it doesn’t have to. If we think about death often, and realize that to live is Christ and to die truly is gain, then we can live lives full of wisdom and godliness. We get to live for Christ today, and we gain him even more if we die tomorrow.
Each of us will stand before God one day to give an account of our lives (2 Cor. 5:10). Don’t let that day be the first you’ve thought about death.
Grayson Pope is a husband and father of three, as well the Managing Web Editor at GCD. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship and has earneda MACS at The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more of his writing check out his website, or follow him on Twitter.
The Outlandish Joy of Obeying Jesus
Where does your resolve come from? For Jonathan Edwards, it came from God. He did not look first to himself—what he wanted to do or to become. He looked first to God, and that made all the difference. Edwards wasn’t always the pastor and theologian we know today; God grew him into that role. He started out like the rest of us, wrestling with who he was and who he wanted to be. But God gripped him and set him apart to himself. He granted Edwards a vision of life that dimmed the spotlight on the man and brightened it on God.
Edwards’ 62nd resolution is but one example:
"Resolved, never to do anything but duty; and then according to Eph. 6:6-8, do it willingly and cheerfully as unto the Lord, and not to man; “knowing that whatever good thing any man doth, the same shall he receive of the Lord."
Could God use a man who resolved such a thing? Could he use anyone who didn’t?
Doing our duty before the Lord is the greatest life we could ever live, but it’s the thing our flesh wants most not to do. Add in the resolution to do it willingly and cheerfully and one has the makings of a frustrating life. This resolution is not for the faint of heart. It is a promise to oneself to remove the “I” of life and replace it with the glorious God of the universe—a God who was the true master of his life, the only one who knew who he should be and do.
Edwards was not a perfect man; only Jesus was. But his resolve to follow Jesus for who he is calls us to consider the remarkable life of the Christian. Everything we do is under the sight of God, the guidance of God, and the love of God. Our lives are not meaningless, and the sooner we realize that the sooner we’ll begin to live as we should.
To realize our lives aren’t meaningless is, at the risk of sounding contradictory, to realize that we aren’t all that important. We are not nothing, to be sure, but we are not everything we tend to think, either.
So who are we? We’re unworthy servants willingly and cheerfully serving Jesus.
WE ARE UNWORTHY SERVANTS
In Luke 17, Jesus is talking to his apostles. After a hard teaching about temptation, they said to him, “Increase our faith!” Jesus tells them about a mustard seed of faith strong enough to move mountains. Then, for some reason, he shifts to duty.
“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” – Luke 17:6-10
We all want increased faith, but for what purpose? If our request for increased faith is merely to see mountains move, we’re asking God to grant faith for an end that is not him. In our “God-dreams,” we must be careful not to use God’s name in vain. We must be sure our desires match his. Faith in Christ doesn’t make us miracle workers, it directs us to the Miracle Worker.
We are all tempted to spiritual pride. So Jesus sets us in our place, reminding us of who we are: unworthy servants. We’re free in Christ, but we’re slaves to him. And when a slave has done his duty to his master, he does not expect any gain in return. He has not given anything to his master he does not already have. He will not receive a reward for doing what he’s commanded.
Is this offensive to you? It is to me.
But it wasn’t to Edwards. He resolved never to do anything but duty. Like the Apostle Paul, he identified himself as a “bondservant” of Christ (Eph. 6:6). His idea of life began and ended with the Word of God; what he commanded was his duty to obey. Is that a dull life? Well, that depends on your master, doesn’t it?
NEVER TO DO ANYTHING BUT DUTY
What did Edwards mean by “never to do anything but duty?” He meant a life not of dull service but a life of intimate following. To follow a hard master is a wearisome task, but Jesus is no ordinary master. Instead of demanding harder work and higher yields, Jesus says,
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matt. 11:28-30
What is the work of Jesus Christ in the world? He came to save his people from their sins, redeem all things, restore all that’s lost, and mend all that’s broken. He came to destroy the power of sin. He came to give sight to the blind and to raise the dead. He came to set the captives free, to rescue the oppressed. He came to live the perfect life, die the guilty death, and rise again in glory. He came to bring man to God and God to man.
Jesus is the life-giving master. He’s the only master who, if we follow him, will give us tasks of glory and, when we fail him, will forgive us completely. He calls us into his work, things no less significant than the spread of the gospel for the salvation of the world. He asks us to do our duty, as unworthy servants, because that’s who we are. We have no righteousness of our own that compels him to us.
We cannot carry out his commands apart from his grace. We have no claim to make on our Maker and Savior. We are unworthy in every sense of the world—but it is for the unworthy that he came!
OUR DUTY IS OUR YES TO GOD
Doing our duty increases our faith. As we obey, we see God at work. What then is our duty? In one sense, it is nothing less than our immediate and constant yes to God. It is not a yes to the things we want to do but a yes to all the things he calls us to do, even if our yes’s are to seemingly small requests:
- “Yes, Lord, I will pray right now for this suffering man.”
- “Yes, Lord, I will turn my eyes from her so as not to lust.”
- “Yes, Lord, I will obey your call to work hard today.”
- “Yes, Lord, I will be gentle with my wayward child."
- “Yes, Lord, I will love this person I just can’t get along with.”
- “Yes, Lord, I will suffer quietly, enduring false accusations because you know my heart.”
- “Yes, Lord, I will deny myself because in Christ I have all things.”
We don’t do our duty before Jesus under the shadow of the law, we do it under the Son of Righteousness. Paul explains in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
The joy Jesus had for his servants led him to the cross. How much more should his joy lead us into his work?
THE OUTLANDISH JOY OF OBEDIENCE TO JESUS
Christ gives his people his Spirit—all the internal will and cheer we will ever need—if we seek him and search for his voice. Jesus’ wish is our command. In the remarkable grace of God, our moment by moment yes brings heaven’s work to earth.
And our work is not apart from his watchful eye. What we do for him will yield rewards in the end. He will remember our service to the saints (Heb. 6:10). He will return all the good we did (Eph. 6:8). We are unworthy servants, yes. We’re bondservants of Christ, it’s true. But we’re doing the works of God (John 14:12)! We cannot claim our seat at his table, but one day our Master will seat us at his marriage supper of the Lamb.
Being a servant of Christ is a lowly thing until you see how high a thing it truly is.
David McLemore is the Director of Teaching Ministries at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons.
Never Lose One Moment of Time
Editor’s note: This month at GCD you will be seeing articles from our team of Staff Writers and other contributors on a handful of topics that Jonathan Edwards introduced in his own Resolutions. The aim of this series is to help you see how a gospel-formed resolution can help you flourish in your love for Christ and for others next year. Click here to see all articles in this series.
There is no lack of content on the topic of time in pop culture. From Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” to Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” there is an oft-repeated chorus of lament that once a minute is lived it cannot be relived.
Science fiction explores the would-be-worlds in which time travel exists in stories like H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, or the more lighthearted Back to the Future. Oh, what we would change if only the possibility to return to past moments existed!
The reality is that the past stays in the past, and a minute wasted can never be reinvested. The old adage “time is money” is a half-truth when applied to our vocations, but the equation falls desperately short in terms of currency. It is possible for one to waste an entire fortune and somehow regain their riches, but each hour of our lives wasted is lost forever.
In a recent film called In Time, the audience is cast into a world where the currency of the day is time added to one’s life. The characters in this alternate universe are genetically engineered to expire after their twenty-fifth birthday but are able to cheat this fate as their employers pay them in minutes added to their lifespan. The depravity is all-too-real as the vast disparity between the virtually immortal rich and the poor who are literally living paycheck-to-paycheck.
How would we live differently if we knew exactly how many minutes we had until we died?
NEVER LOSE ONE MOMENT
This brings me to a resolution of Jonathan Edwards that the 21st-century human may find most convicting:
"#5 - Resolved, never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can."
At first glance, this resolution appears to come from another voice in the stream of productivity gurus. Time is juxtaposed with profit, so we’re tempted to only think in terms of maximizing efficiency.
But Edwards didn’t desire to live his life in a way where he makes the most money. Instead, he aimed to make much of his Messiah. If we start working overtime in our careers or doubling down in the stock market, it is not God’s kingdom we’re seeking, but mammon’s.
Time well spent has nothing to do with Wall Street and everything to do with worship.
THIS IS THE DAY THAT THE LORD HAS MADE
Anyone who has ever mourned time wasted by mindlessly scrolling through social media knows that there are more noble tasks with which to spend our time. Christians have long been noted for their frivolity when it comes to financial generosity and their prudence when it comes to sexual desire. In the 21st century, what if they also became known for their insistence on making the most of their time?
Returning to the world of science fiction, one of the most gut-wrenching glimpses into the priceless nature of our finite time is in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Upon arriving back on their ship after a stint where time passes differently, the main characters learn that twenty-three years have passed. From their perspective, they were gone for only a handful of hours. There is a palpable sense of grief in the characters that the viewer experiences as well; grief over the loss of time and the life that could have been lived.
To the outside world, time spent reading and re-reading Scripture, praying to our unseen Creator, and seeking silence and solitude to commune with our Savior should speak volumes. But I fear that many Christians have syncretized biblical faith with 21st-century self-worship. When taking selfies is a higher priority than taking a Sabbath from our self-absorbed lives, little distinction can be made between the Church and the surrounding culture. Edwards’ resolution hits the self-absorbed Christian (myself included) right in the gut.
What a blessing from God that every moment spent seeking him is a moment well spent. No one on his or her deathbed will regret one nanosecond spent in Word or worship. Mark Twain brilliantly quipped on our deaths, “We’ll be mourned for a day, and forgotten for a lifetime.” Yet we still feel that pull to post one more selfie.
No one can rob us of time pursuing our Creator, that is, no one but ourselves. Those in prison and torture camps can be deprived of everything, but not their ability to pray and commune with God. In God’s economy, one can even see the deprivation of all material comforts as a blessing that forces one to pursue God undistracted.
LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE
Our hearts sink when we hear stories of men and women serving forty years of a life sentence only to be freed when new forensic breakthroughs reveal they were innocent all along. But there are worse things than the innocent rotting away in a jail cell.
Richard Wurmbrand, the founder of Voice of the Martyrs, chronicles the torture he experienced while imprisoned for his faith in communist Romania. While reading of his experience, one is overcome by the evidence of Christ’s work in Wurmbrand’s life. It would be all too easy for the careless onlooker to classify his time spent in confinement as the brutal robbery of a decade and a half of his life. But because of his intense affections for God and love for his neighbor—including his savage communist jailers—he never lost hope that God would redeem his lost time for a greater purpose. In his own words:
“A total of fourteen years in prison passed for me. During all this time I never saw a Bible or any other book. I had forgotten how to write. Because of the great hunger, doping and tortures, I had forgotten the Holy Scriptures. But on the day that I fulfilled fourteen years, out of oblivion came into my mind the verse: ‘Jacob worked for Rachel fourteen years and it seemed to him a little time because he loved her.’ ”[1]
Wurmbrand’s life is a testament to one who takes Jesus’ commands seriously. In picking up his cross daily, he considered the lives of his jailers more important than his own. He was all too willing to give up his life, and he did—fourteen whole years of it—in order that others might see the all-surpassing glory of his savior.
A PRISON OF OUR OWN MAKING
There is a parody of Wurmbrand’s imprisonment that is taking place in millions of households across the world. There, people are enslaved, not by brutal guards, but by the backlit screen of their smartphones. The sun rises and sets in the backdrop and another day fades away like smoke. The real tragedy is that the enslavement is a welcome one.
How I wish I was immune to this phenomenon. I’m all too familiar with the dopamine hit that mindlessly unlocking my iPhone brings. I need Jesus’ grace and the indwelling Spirit to reorient my life around things of ultimate importance.
Worldly values, committed to the kingdom of self, see Wurmbrand’s imprisonment and willing use of his life to support the persecuted Church, as a waste. But the follower of Christ knows better. Not one minute of torture will go wasted in the coming kingdom; God will redeem it. I suspect Wurmbrand himself does not know just how many guards were moved by his selfless love and witness in the rat-infested hole he was kept in. As we get glimpses of the already-but-not-yet kingdom, we see a different economy of time where worship and self-denial are the wisest uses of it.
I pray God would give me the grace to begin making that my reality now!
How about you?
This world is passing away and will soon be eclipsed by the realization of Christ’s kingdom. Those who enter into it will see things for what they truly are: every moment dedicated to self will be burned away, but every moment spent pursuing the King is a moment invested in eternity.
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil (Ephesians 5:15-16).
[1] Wurmbrand, Richard. Tortured for Christ, 1967. pg. 53
Sean Nolan (B.S. and M.A., Clarks Summit University) is the Family Life Pastor at Christ Fellowship Church in Forest Hill, Maryland. Prior to that, he served at a church plant in Troy, New York for seven years and taught Hermeneutics to ninth and tenth graders. He is married to Hannah and is raising an army of toddlers. He blogs at Family Life Pastor. You can read all of Sean’s articles here.
Speak No Evil—Unless It's the Right Thing To Do
Editor’s note: This month at GCD you will be seeing articles from our team of Staff Writers and other contributors on a handful of topics that Jonathan Edwards introduced in his own Resolutions. The aim of this series is to help you see how a gospel-formed resolution can help you flourish in your love for Christ and for others next year. Click here to see all articles in this series.
On December 19, 1722, the supply preacher of a small Presbyterian church in New York City made a second journal entry in his new endeavor: “Resolved, never to speak evil of any, except I have some particular good call for it.”
This entry eventually became known as number thirty-six of Jonathan Edwards' "Resolutions." Edwards, the supply preacher, would become well known for these resolutions in the years to come. To him, the “Resolutions” were a collection of matter-of-fact statements he sought to live by. These were not the kinds of resolutions culturally associated with New Year’s Day.
As biographer George Claghorn observes, “For Edwards, [the Resolutions] were neither pious hopes, romantic dreams, nor legalistic rules. They were instructions for life, maxims to be followed in all respects. Edwards depended on the sustaining strength of his omnipotent Deity to enable him to live up to them.”
And certainly, God help any man trying to live according to that second entry, known as Resolution #36: “Resolved, never to speak evil of any, except I have some particular good call for it.” Talk about a pious hope, a romantic dream, a legalistic rule if you've ever heard of one!
SPEAK NO EVIL
In our own day, speaking evil is far from taboo. It’s a practice most of us engage in to some degree, whether subtle or explicit, private or public (more on that in a moment).
Edwards didn’t provide any comments regarding his resolutions; after all, part of their charm is their brevity. So here I am, nearly 300 years later, left wondering what exactly motivated such a statement. Why did Edwards feel the need to make this resolution? And how can we apply it to our own 2018 context?
One of the greatest cultural lies about our words is that while “sticks and stones may break my bones, words may never hurt me.” Words, culturally speaking, are treated as inconsequential. They carry little weight. We hardly flinch at spoken evil, because they are just words.
I believe one of the driving forces behind Resolution #36 is Edwards’ acute sense of the power of the tongue. No doubt Edwards knew his Bible, and in a season of preaching on the words of Jesus, James, Paul, Solomon, and the prophets, there is no doubt that he was aware of what all these men taught about the tongue. Take James’ words, perhaps some of the most blunt, on the power of the tongue:
“The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” – James 3:6-8
THE POWER OF THE TONGUE
Other biblical authors agreed with James’ observations of the tongue’s power, the weightiness of words. Solomon remarked that “death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21).
Near its end, Romans 1, a passage often consulted as a condemnation of the practice of homosexuality, actually makes even more frequent mention to the sins of gossip, slander, boasting, spreading evil, and ruthlessness, noting that even the approval of such sins is contemptible (Rom. 1:28-32).
Jesus once strikingly warned, “On the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12:36-37, emphasis added).
STICKS AND STONES . . .
Sticks and stones may break bones, but words have the potential to break one’s soul.
“Speaking evil of any” then, for the biblical authors and for Edwards, was any form of speech toward or about another that was destructive, harmful, negative, unrighteous, or unforgiving. Every careless word will be taken note of.
It’s that last attribute I want to focus on now: “careless.” All evil speech is careless. In one sense, it is careless because it is absent of care for the one of whom it speaks.
As Christians, all created in the image of God, related linearly to one another, we have been called to let our speech be full of grace and seasoned with salt (Col. 4:6). Paul wrote that our speech should have the same kind of preserving quality that salt has; it is not to be acidic and to break down, but to build up.
If we are truly, as Paul said, “ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20), our speech must be perceived as the same “words of life” that Christ spoke in the world (John 6:63, 68).
WHEN SPEAKING EVIL IS GOOD
But there’s another important part of Edwards’ resolution that needs to be discussed, and that’s the qualifier of his first statement: “Resolved, never to speak evil of any, except I have some particular good call for it.”
Is there ever a moment, as Christians, when “speaking evil” is the right thing to do? Yes, according to Edwards. Hang with me a moment.
If I’m reading Edwards right, it seems there are times in life where we reprove, we denounce, we break down, we refuse to preserve, we spread the word of rebuke over another because it’s the biblical thing to do.
When would this ever be the case? We need “some particular good call for it.”
That is important because if such a call exists, our words are no longer careless in nature—indeed, there is purpose and intention instead of absentmindedness or recklessness. What we find in Scripture is that our words can—and should—be used not only to build one another up, but also to tear down what is evil in the world.
Paul calls us to “expose” the fruitless deeds of darkness (Eph. 5:11-12), to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). For the one who persists in sin, “rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear” (1 Tim. 5:20).
Paul, and Edwards, knew there would certainly be moments in which we are compelled by the gospel to speak out, and that might require hard words, even public rebuke.
So the solution is not simply to “Judge not!” We should judge “with righteous judgment” (John 7:24). We should do so because we care.
WORDS MATTER
The end goal ultimately must be the proclamation of the words of life. We all participate in the preaching of the gospel by our using words because they are necessary.
Christians today experience the power of the tongue in a way Jonathan Edwards never did. Edwards never had to live in a day where online trolling was seen as a sport, putting notches in belts of the anonymous for “sick burns.”
Speaking evil is part and parcel of how our culture communicates. And every careless word, whether posted to Twitter or written in a diary, will be included in what Leif Enger called “The Great Ledger of our recorded decisions.”
But our place in time is not necessarily a bad thing. We actually have a brilliant opportunity to leverage our moment, our words in these days, for the glory of God. We have an amazing opportunity and unprecedented access to denounce evil in the name of Christ, to speak the gospel’s refining fire into the world, and use words that demonstrate our utter care.
Like the rest of Edwards’ resolutions, we can only bring our words into submission of Christ by the power of the Spirit in us. We will say things we regret. We will put our feet in our mouths sometimes.
But with Christ's help, and for his glory, we can resolve with Edwards to put away careless speech, to practice speaking with care, only “speaking evil” when the gospel compels us to do so.
Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.
Don't Let the Fire Go Out
Editor’s note: This month at GCD you will be seeing articles from our team of Staff Writers and other contributors on a handful of topics that Jonathan Edwards introduced in his own Resolutions. The aim of this series is to help you see how a gospel-formed resolution can help you flourish in your love for Christ and for others next year. Click here to see all articles in this series.
I could feel my eyes glazing over as she talked about how sick her dog was.
She was devastated, and I was really tired. I could feel my mind pulsing with each and every heartbeat. I was empty and dry, and at this point, any expectations of conversation would be like wringing out a dry towel. I knew my weariness was getting in the way of my attention at this benefit dinner.
I was still standing in this fancy dress and uncomfortable shoes only because I knew it was expected of me. On the inside, I was calculating every single moment in a process until I could leave and be in the comfort of my own home. I had nothing left.
When my car finally pulled into the driveway, I escaped to the haven of my room and turned on my floor fan, letting the cool air kiss my face. I turned on music to fill the empty space in my head. The air and lyrics filled my dry lungs with breath. Over the past few months, my eyes had become tired, drifting from the secure place of Jesus, and refocusing on my responsibilities. I was not dried out by momentary exhaustion, but exhaustion of the heart.
Can you identify with this kind of exhaustion? It’s when your own health and well-being becomes secondary to everything else. It’s the feeling that we have to sprint to even keep up, and breathing itself becomes a task.
The words “spirit” and “breath” are known to be interchangeable in Scripture. That’s fitting, because when we’re spending ourselves beyond our limit, typically we are not depending on the work of the Spirit. We’re short of breath and feel the need to anxiously count each one we take. We are limited when we’re not relying on the endless supply of the Spirit.
GIVE ME OIL
Throughout Exodus, God intricately instructs his people on how the tabernacle should be built. Every word has meaning, and every meaning has great purpose in pointing to Jesus.
One piece of furniture you’re probably familiar with is the golden lampstand (Ex. 25:31). I have heard about the lampstand, read about it, and seen photos of it. However, I was completely unaware of how much spiritual significance went into it.
When God talks about the creation of this beautiful source of light, he makes it clear that candles aren’t sufficient. Candles are wax, and wax burns itself. At the end of the day, a candle will burn its wax down until there is nothing left. The flame will go out.
In instructions found later in the Old Testament, God says “do not let the fire go out” countless times (Lev. 6:9-13). The symbolic flame found in this intimate meeting place was never to lose its light. It had to burn continuously.
Therefore, God asks for an oil-burning lampstand. An oil-burning flame doesn’t burn itself, but burns from an external source. An endless supply of anointed oil.
Similar to our source found in the Holy Spirit, God’s Word through this lamp echoes his everlasting sustenance given by the Spirit. His supply is our supply, and it is sustained only by intimate connection to his original source.
FUEL FOR YOUR STORY
God’s work in you is extraordinarily important. He created you with intention and detail. The working together of your history, your gifting, and his purpose becomes a beautiful thing called your story. It’s one of the most powerful tools used for salvation (Rev. 12:11) because it draws people in to listen to the sound of God’s marvelous grace.
However, we have to know how to steward these things. Our history typically holds some degree of brokenness and requires our willingness to stop, search, and be restored from past hurt or anger. Our gifting requires discipleship as we walk into situations and relationships where we’re asked to use these gifts to help someone else. Last, God’s fulfilled purpose requires both our patience and our trust. We have to walk willingly on a journey that is uncomfortable and unpredictable.
If you don’t lean into the strength and power of God for each of these things, you will burn out. Without the filling of the Holy Spirit, you are susceptible to resent your past, neglect your gifting, and ultimately miss God’s true purpose for you. You’ll lean into your own self-sufficient energy and burn yourself down. You’ll lose the brightness of your light, perhaps causing you and those around you to stumble.
3 WAYS TO CONNECT TO THE SOURCE
We don’t have to run ourselves into the ground, though. We can remember the source of our light through prayer, through biblical accountability, and the psalms.
We have to press into prayer, constantly checking our hearts. Is the gospel informing the way you live? Are you worried about things beyond your control? Does your life have margin for rest? Praying these questions and listening for God’s guidance can lead us towards deeper dependence on God, and less dependence on ourselves.
Biblical accountability is simply living along with people who can lovingly speak the truth when we need to hear it. If we’re walking in sin, it’s usually seen and felt by the people closest to us. Sin is easy enough to notice, whether it is rebellion, codependency, or self-sufficiency. But we need people around us who are willing to tell us they see it.
The Psalms have a way of speaking gentle conviction to our hearts, often saying the very things only our hearts know. The poetic crying out for rescue reminds us of our own need. I recognize what’s happening inside of me most when I read the Psalms.
We are called to have a light that burns in the darkest place, and that flame should continuously burn. If we are the fuel to the light we give off, we will burn down like candles and our light will go out. This makes us helpless to others and all ministry opportunities.
However, our flames will not lose their light if we are burning the inner fuel of the Spirit of God. This oil doesn’t run dry, and it radiates the most magnificent light.
Chelsea Vaughn (@chelsea725) is currently living in Nashville but has spent time in Texas, Thailand, and Australia. Obviously, travel is a passion, along with hours in the kitchen or across the table from good friends. She does freelance writing, editing, and speaking for various organizations and non-profits. She hopes to spend her life using her gift for communication to reach culture and communities with the love of Jesus.
The Power of Gospel-Formed Resolutions
Editor's note: This next month at GCD you will be seeing articles from our team of Staff Writers and other contributors on a handful of topics that Jonathan Edwards introduced in his own Resolutions. The aim of this series is to help you see how a gospel-formed resolution can help you flourish in your love for Christ and for others next year. Click here to see all articles in this series.
January 1 is a great day for introspection if you allow for it. Regardless of how you spent your final evening of last year, the clock has moved and today is a new start, a new year, a fresh beginning. In some South American contexts, the celebration of New Year’s gives a startling depiction of this transition. Life-sized models are stuffed with hay, newspaper, and an assortment of fireworks and other combustibles to be burned in effigy at the stroke of midnight. Often, masks representing particular political or cultural celebrities are placed on the doll to personify the year left behind. It’s a way of cleansing—burning away the previous year with its trials and difficulties and making room for a new, more hopeful year.
As the New Year comes into reality, there can be a sense of concern about the year ahead. What will the next 365 days hold for us? Will they be profitable? Will they be well spent? Will they hold joy and happiness, or despair and difficulty? Add to that concern a layer of shame that takes form in our hearts when we consider the missed opportunities, lack of progress, or downright failures we experienced in the year prior. I didn’t lose the weight I said I would, nor did I complete reading the Bible in its entirety. I didn’t pray. I didn’t give as much as wanted to. I didn’t defeat that habitual sin that has plagued my character.
Expressions like these squirm their way into my heart and mind every year. Usually, somewhere around mid-to-late December, I begin strategizing to tackle the year ahead differently. I develop a battle plan for things like personal Bible engagement and prayer. I stand on the scales and consider my overall hearth, and make a few dedications to drop the weight this year and exercise. I’ll even clean out my smartphone from all the excess applications and distractions so that I can be more focused and productive. I am willing to guess that many of us do similar activities. It has been a cultural phenomenon for years to make “New Year’s Resolutions.”
THE LAW OF THE RESOLUTION
I’ve wavered back and forth on the helpfulness of things like New Year’s Resolutions in my life. In some ways, we know they can be helpful and even formational for us as they give some definition and boundary to our lives. On the other hand, our resolutions can be disastrous when we fail to keep them. Those lingering feelings of guilt and shame are leftovers from last year’s failed resolutions. An even greater danger lurks in the heart of someone who has kept and accomplished their resolution—prideful self-righteousness.
Resolutions, some would argue, are essentially another form of legalism. They compile a list of “dos” and “don’ts” that limit the life of a follower of Jesus. Resolutions can become boundaries that limit the freedom of life in Christ with all its delights. The person who resolves to lose weight becomes a slave to food choices, exercise, and culinary asceticism. Those who resolve to undertake a spiritual discipline immediately become subject to the rituals of that discipline and sacrifice their freedom to appease the demands of the spiritual. Within the culture of any community, even the church, a group of practitioners or non-practitioners of any given resolution can quickly devolve into tribal gangs opposed to one another over such things as who does eat something, and who does not.
If this were the case, it would seem inherent to the freedom of human responsibility that resolutions should be left alone because they create an unnecessary legalism and separation. Even the danger of a legalistic following of a resolution can, within the church, destroy the bonds of unity and peace that the Spirit of God gives to his people. Resolutions, seen in this way, can be disastrous and therefore should be dismissed altogether.
JONATHAN EDWARDS’ RESOLUTIONS
But what if these types of resolutions were shaped and informed by the gospel? Could they then become some sort of meaningful and formative enterprise into which the Christian can find true growth and freedom? Could they be a means of development and joy, even grace, among a people of God? I believe so—as long as one understands and approaches resolutions from a posture of humility informed by the gospel.
Jonathan Edwards is a classic example of this sort of humble, gospel-centered resolving. Before he hit the age of twenty, Edwards found it important to create a set of governing principles to shape his character, practice, and piety. While one could imagine that Edwards’ resolutions were the product of a young and ambitious mind that never saw the light of practical day, it seems that these resolutions were foundational anchors to Edwards’ everyday life. His life exhibited growth in grace, temperance, and passion for the Lord.
But how did Edwards walk with these resolutions throughout his life? Was his resolve a product of mere white-knuckled willpower and obedience to a law he created? The evidence seems to point as far away from this perspective as possible. Edwards own introduction to his resolutions demonstrated the posture of his heart in achieving these resolutions:
“Being sensible that I am unable to do any thing without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him, by his grace, to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake”.[1]
Edwards’ ability to live out his resolutions was not a result of an extraordinary capacity towards regimented and obedient life. They were birthed by a greater ambition that had come to him through the gospel. For Edwards, his life was all about living to the glory of God in all things. The very first resolution he makes states, “Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to be most to the glory of God.”[2] Or, to say it another way, Edwards’ life was to be lived for “Christ’s sake.”
And yet, living for the sake of Christ and the glory of God fully required something deeper of Edwards: a clear understanding of his incapability of living that life apart from the supernatural enablement of the Spirit of God through the grace of God in Christ Jesus. He declared, “I am unable to do anything without God’s help.” It was clear in Edwards’ head that these resolutions were unattainable as goals for life apart from the power of God. Living to the glory of God, as desirable an end as that is, is unreachable because of our sin apart from God’s kindness towards sinners, which he displayed in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
GOSPEL-FORMED RESOLUTIONS
This is where our own resolutions can be informed. I want to better glorify God in my own life this year. I know there are areas of my heart, mind, and body that need to come under the transforming power of the gospel. I know I am accepted by God because of the perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and that I am gifted with the Holy Spirit as both a guarantee and down payment of my redemption. He indwells me in order to craft and cultivate character within my life that glorifies Christ. Therefore, I can resolve to practice—or not practice—certain things, not in an effort to earn my right standing before God, but so that I can be more in tune with and shaped by the holiness of God to be more like Christ.
I can say with Edwards, “Resolved, Never to do any thing out of revenge[3]” and know that, if I do well in that regard this year, I am growing in Christ-likeness because I’ve tasted the goodness of God. I can also rest assured that if I fail (more like, when I fail) in this, I am still loved and accepted by the Father, and can confess and repent and resolve again with the power of God enabling me to get up and keep going.
In light of the gospel, these resolutions become tools by which we “make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness…” (2 Pet. 1:5). These resolutions are the vehicles that aim the trajectory of our lives to “strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). They give tangible, personal particulars to the call to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12).
Gospel-formed resolutions can be a helpful means putting to death the old person so that we can put on the new person of Christ-likeness and grow into godliness. Perhaps the first resolution we should adopt is to make a stuffed mannequin of ourselves, burn them at the stroke of midnight, and resolve to embrace the gospel and all its hope and security for the year ahead. We could resolve with great ambition to live for the sake of Christ under the power and influence of the Holy Spirit all our days. How the world would change.
[1] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1 (Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), lxii.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., lxiii.
Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and Make, Mature, Multiply. He writes personally at jwritebol.net. You can read all of Jeremy’s articles for GCD here.