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Forget Your First Name: How to Live for Legacy 27.7.2024 03:00

I keep hearing stories about young couples who do not want children.

Many are refusing kids for no better reason than preference (a euphemism for selfishness). Articles are written of lonely grandparent-age adults who “empowered” their kids to chase their career ambitions (and to neglect having children), and now are no grandparents at all. They feel something missing. You can’t read books or play catch or have sleepovers with a new boat. You don’t hang pictures of your country club on the fridge. But that is what their successful children have to offer.

The last name seems close to becoming an endangered species. We live for first names — it is John, just John — as if we came from nothing and have nothing to extend. These couples seem content to be the end of a family tree that branches no farther than them — all their ancestry leading, fortunately for them, to their personal happiness, vacations, and easy retirement. You only live once, you know; why spend it on children? If we want companionship, get a dog.

Now contrast this portrait of living for us and our first names with the alternative (men, pay close attention to your part):

Man rises above time. He can grasp his existence, he can see it in the context of a family that extends far into the past and will extend far into the future. And it is more than a blood relationship. It is also cultural: there is a sense in which he can say, We are the Smiths, and mean to include not only persons but their histories and their way of life. The father is the key to this transcendence. Think. Forget the slogans, the ideology of sexual indifference, and face what is real. A child’s connection with his mother requires no explanation. Body depends upon body. It is the father who requires explanation. (Anthony Esolen, No Apologies, 127)

Living by yourself, for yourself, requires no explanation. Living for money, for fame, for personal gratification requires no explanation. But to birth and guide and nurture immortal souls, to live and build a name and family history that transcends you, to bow as a foundation stone to a new way of living for Christ or to place your stone upon a pile already stacked — especially as a man, Esolen argues — requires explanation.

Generation of First Names

One of the most famous discussions about names shows the difference between living for one’s first or last name. What’s in a name? lovesick Juliet asks. Thinking upon her Romeo, the forbidden son of the rival Montague family, she sighs that the romance should remain a dream because of a last name. If he had another, they could be together. “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,” she reasons upon her balcony.

What’s Montague? It is not hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet. (2.2.41–47)

An arm is not a name. A smile is not a name. A man is not a name. A rose, whatever you call it, still smells as sweet, still looks as fair. Call the flower crimsonella, and the thorny stem and red petals remain. In a world of ever-expanding names to keep pace with our so-called ever-evolving self, we are tempted to ask the same question — what’s really in anything but a first name?

Teenage Juliet spoke of last names as arbitrary symbols keeping her from her desire. Reality, to her, remained untouched by swapping one label for another. In one sense, this is true. God, the first namer, could have called the waters “land” and the lands “water,” the moon “sun” and the sun “moon,” the night “day” and the day “night.” Adam, likewise, could have called the tiger “zebra” to no effect on either’s stripes.

But her elders knew that more lay in the personal name Montague. For the elder Montagues, history lay in the name — deeds done, and deeds done against. Honor or shame was bound in the name, and bitter enmity too. More than a name lived in Montague; a past did too, ground as sacred as the graves of buried ancestors. To them, that name held something larger and older and deeper than a fleeting teenage infatuation. Montague was a body with different parts, a tree with different branches, something that outlived and outweighed the individual. A family name not to be cheaply sold as Esau’s birthright.

Erased from Earth

The spirit of Western individualism inclines us toward our own balconies, happy to cast lineage — or even biology — aside for personal desire. Each is his own author, his own alpha and omega. Families and their names are mere formalities when roadblocks to personal happiness or self-definition.

But most in the past (as well as many today in the East) did not think this way. A lot was in a name; they valued genealogies. Hear the blessing that God promises Abraham: “I will bless you and make your name great” (Genesis 12:2). Great, that is, not through his life alone, but through the lives of his offspring. Conversely, a chief curse in Israel was to “blot out [one’s] name from under heaven” (Deuteronomy 29:20). We do not know enough to rejoice in the benediction or shiver at the warning. How was a name blotted out? Overhear Saul pleading with David, “Swear to me . . . by the Lord that you will not cut off my offspring after me, and that you will not destroy my name out of my father’s house” (1 Samuel 24:21).

To have your name blotted from heaven usually meant to have your lineage end (especially without a male offspring), leaving no continuance of your memory under heaven. “Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself the pillar that is in the King’s Valley.” Why make this pillar? “For he said, ‘I have no son to keep my name in remembrance’” (2 Samuel 18:18). Declining birth rates tell of a people building pillars in the valley because they don’t prefer sons. Yet to be finally erased from earth — physically in death, and intangibly in name — often resulted, in the Old Testament, from God’s wrath.

In that day, your name was your memory, a thread of immortality, a part of you that lived on earth after death. Solomon used “memory” and “name” interchangeably: “The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot” (Proverbs 10:7). The memory of the righteous man would live on as a blessing to his children, but the name of the wicked would rot and be forgotten. Juliet was right: Montague was not a hand or a foot — flesh and blood were mortal. But a name blessed of God lives forever.

Names in Heaven

The modern story has become no larger than our personal stories. We clamor to write our autobiographies — of our triumphs, oppressions, abuses, sexuality, freedoms. Self-consciousness, self-determinism, and self-expression are inalienable rights. We build to the heavens to make names for ourselves. Family, legacy, past generations, future — what of it? It’s Romeo, just Romeo. We are a people of first names. God, come confuse our speech to cure our madness.

But (and this narrows the point) we are not mere collectivists; we are Christians. Idolatry can be both self-absorbed or family-consumed. A people can refuse the only name given among men by which they must be saved in favor of their first name or their last. Our great hope is not in any name we have, but in the name of Jesus Christ, who, for his great name’s sake, has acted to save us.

We care about our children and future generations because we care about Christ. We care about our last names because we want a household to serve the name of Jesus Christ. What we labor to build is no Babel to either of our names, but a spiritual legacy to his. What is a Smith, a Morse, a Melekin, or a Montague? What is a Johnson or Jerome compared with Jesus? His is the name raised far “above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:21). “On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16). Those in hell live to curse this name (Revelation 16:9); we love his name, bless his name, hallow his name.

Jewels in His Crown

Before his name, all names shrink into obscurity. What is really in a name? Only that which finds its place next to his. He alone bestows upon us that name worth having beyond death; he alone makes his sons into his pillars:

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. (Revelation 3:12)

We are Christians, a people who have the Father’s name and Lamb’s name written on our foreheads, inscribed by the Spirit of God (Revelation 14:1; 22:4). He names us sons, daughters, citizens, saints, children, conquerors. We name him Lord, Savior, Groom, Master, Friend. We live to bring all glory to his name. We raise families, not simply for our family name, but (we pray) for his. We live and breathe and have our being in relation to his name. It is our sun by day, our North Star by night. Our names shine as diadems set within his crown, as spoils from his victory, as letters written in his book recording his great triumph — “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8).

God’s Beloved Sun: Enjoying His Pleasure in Creation 26.7.2024 03:00

Two red finches dance around a bird feeder in my front window, their crimson wings painting the morning air. Beyond them, the rising sun sends golden light dripping through the leaves of my crabapple tree to pool in patches on the front lawn. A few towering cedars stand sentinel above. They nod their hoary heads in time with the silent breeze as if to give their approval to the sunrise. And nearer than all these, twin baby girls sit smiling, full of milk and flexing their newfound voices in infant glee. The scene is soaked in pleasures and fills my heart with a wild joy.

Perhaps you have had a similar experience and have wondered, as I did, whether this kind of scene makes God happy. Does he enjoy this lovely slice of creation with the same delight I do? Does he actually like what he has made? If we can answer those questions, not only will we gain insight into the fathomless gladness of our God, but we will also be better equipped to engage with God’s world as he does.

Trinitarian Fullness

To begin, yes, God delights in his creation! The Lord rejoices in the works of his hands, from the red finch to the rising sun to the little girls made in his image (Psalm 104:31). How could it be otherwise? God is no idolator, and so God is foremost in his own affections. From all eternity, the Father and Son have perfectly delighted in one another by the Spirit. This unfathomable abundance of life and love, beauty and joy is his Trinitarian fullness. And creation externally expresses some of this internal fullness.

Everything that is not God makes God’s divine nature and power visible (Romans 1:20). The world with a deafening voice declares the glory (Psalm 19:1). So, if God loves himself perfectly, how could he not take pleasure in his creation? Jonathan Edwards explains, “As he delights in his own light, he must delight in every beam of that light” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 157). To do otherwise would demonstrate a defect in his love.

Furthermore, no one can force God to do anything. He is the freest and happiest being imaginable. Therefore, if things exist (and they do), they exist because God is satisfied that they should be. As someone once observed, if God wanted to erase the universe, he wouldn’t have to do anything. He’d have to stop doing something. You exist, trees exist, stars exist, mosquitoes exist because it is God’s present pleasure to make it so. To riff on G.K. Chesterton, creation is the continual, exuberant encore of a God who delights in all that he has made. The sun rises each morning because God gives it a daily bravo.

Divine Hedonics

For Christian Hedonists, God’s happiness in creation comes as no surprise. But can we say more? Can we, as with fine wine, discern the different hints, flavors, and bright undertones of God’s pleasure in creation? Indeed, we can. In an analogous way, our human joys as subcreators give us a glimpse of God’s joys as Creator. So, what specific kinds of pleasure does God enjoy in his creation?

1. The Pleasure of an Artist

I have a juniper bonsai tree sitting on my back porch. I’ve cultivated — the correct term is “trained” — that tiny tree for years to fit the aesthetic standards of bonsai. It came home with me from the hardware store a wild bush, untrained, uncultivated, and unbalanced. But now it reveals a delightful symmetry — one long, graceful branch on the left harmonizing with two short ones on the right and topped with a tampering crown. I have invested much time, thought, and creative effort to make that bonsai tree beautiful. It is (even if not a great one) a work of art.

All trees are bonsai trees. God “trains” every tree on the planet. In my limited way, I cultivate my little tree with care and attention, but much lies outside my artistic control. Not so with God. He is not only exhaustively sovereign; he is exhaustively artistic. Every elm and ash, each birch and oak, the rowans, maples, poplars, and palms, the innumerable variety of trees — and yes, the crabapple in my front yard — are all God’s bonsais.

This bonsai principle extends far beyond trees. All of creation displays what George Herbert calls God’s curious art. He designs, erects, cultivates, paints, chisels, tunes, sculpts, fills, molds, finishes, and crafts all things to showcase his diverse excellencies. Realizing this led Augustine to pray, “The voice with which [created things] speak is self-evidence. You, Lord, who are beautiful, made them for they are beautiful” (Confessions, 11.4.6). Like sunlight through stained glass, triune beauty dances through the cathedral of creation, filling it with music, magic, and light.

When the divine Artist proclaimed his finished work “very good” (Genesis 1:31), he declared his aesthetic approval and artistic pleasure in what he had made.

2. The Pleasure of an Architect

Speaking of cathedrals, if you want to witness the genius of an architect, spend some time in a great cathedral. From the symmetry of the structure to the harmony of the whole, the particular attention given to each stone, and the symbolic significance of the materials, a cathedral puts the architect’s wisdom, power, and patience on full display.

In the same way, the cathedral of creation displays God’s genius. Scripture repeatedly connects the structure and order of the world with God’s wisdom.

O Lord, how manifold are your works!
      In wisdom have you made them all;
      the earth is full of your creatures. (Psalm 104:24)

God himself describes creation in architectural terms when he points out his providence to Job. The divine Architect “laid the foundations of the earth” and “determined its measurements.” He sunk the cornerstones of the cosmos, set the pillars of the world, and leveled the land. He circumscribed the sea and handcrafted the doors of the deep (Job 38:1–11). Absolutely nothing falls outside this sovereign construction.

Why did he do all this? Why did he construct the world in this way? For the same reason a great architect builds — because he delights in doing it. “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psalm 135:6). God finds pleasure in orchestrating order and instilling degree. He loves hierarchy and harmony. Only the Architect can rejoice in the foundations only he sees.

3. The Pleasure of an Author

Although I am a bit biased, I suspect few pleasures surpass the pleasures of an author. Words make worlds, and wielding that magic thrills the soul. And it should! When our words make our internal life visible, we touch the very principle of our being — like seizing a lightning bolt. We exist because the Word speaks (Hebrews 1:3). Just like our words make what is internal external, God’s cosmos-creating words — words that we can taste and feel, smell and see — communicate his internal fullness.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge captures the enchanting speech of God beautifully in his poem “Frost at Midnight.” Coleridge rejoices that when you attend to creation,

. . . so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Creation is God’s “eternal language” — his never-ceasing speech act. Through this cosmic story, God “teach[es] Himself” to all with ears to hear. And the more he tells the tale, the more we desire to know it.

When Macbeth says life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, he’s only partially correct. Reality is indeed a story, but a perfect narrator, full of goodness and glory, tells it. God never struggles with his story, unlike even the greatest human authors. He never reaches for the right word in vain. He never fails to connect plot points. He never suffers from writer’s block. He never wearies of filling in the details of his characters — from tears shed to hairs on their head (Psalm 139:16). He is the perfect wordsmith. And because creation captures the story of his glory, because the tale ends in the happily ever after, he takes divine delight in the telling. He is the Author of joy (Hebrews 12:2).

4. The Pleasure of a Father

Finally, as a happy Father, God delights in sharing the goodness of his creation with his children. He rejoices in sharing his joy with us because he’s that kind of father. “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). All of it! Every square inch of creation — all that God has declared “very good” — he gives to his people.

Dads get a taste of this pleasure when we share new joys with our kids. I recently introduced my two-year-old to chocolate chip cookies, and — let me tell you! — that moment was far sweeter for me than for him. But there are two ways God’s pleasure as a father outshines mine. First, in giving us creation, God gives himself. The trajectory of our joy goes beyond creation. Like bright sunbeams, the goodness, truth, and beauty of creation give a glimpse of and guide to the Sun. In inviting us to delight in the tiny theophanies of creation, God gives us God.

Yet there is a deeper magic still. God invites us into his own joy. God put his joy in us by giving us his Spirit so that when we rightly delight in creation, we do so with our Maker’s own pleasure. Augustine explains, “When people see these things [creation] with the help of your Spirit, it is you who are seeing in them. . . . Whatever pleases them for your sake is pleasing you in them. The things which by the help of your Spirit delight us are delighting you in us” (Confessions, 8.31.46). It boggles the mind, but when saints enjoy creation for God’s sake and by God’s Spirit, God himself is delighting in the sunshine of his glory through them. Here indeed is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore in the presence of a happy Father!

Your Maker’s Pleasure

God does not simply tolerate creation as if it were an unsavory means to a good end; he takes divine delight in the worlds he has made. His is the pleasure of an Artist, an Architect, an Author, and a Father. And our God is no miser, hoarding his happiness away. The whole point of creation is sharing his fullness with creatures for their joy in him. To borrow the words of Aslan, in creation, everywhere and in everything, God bids us, “Enter into the pleasures of your Maker. You are not yet nearly as happy as I mean you to be.”

Love’s Tender Affection 26.7.2024 03:00

How can we love other Christians with sincere brotherly love? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper turns to Romans 12:9–13 to show how God enlarges our hearts to love with tender affection.

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Requiring Circumcision and Breaking the Law: Galatians 6:11–13 26.7.2024 03:00

Legalism in Paul’s day and legalism in our own day share a similar root: the desire to impress fellow humans.

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Can a Single Pastor Date in His Church? 25.7.2024 03:00

Where should an unmarried pastor look for a wife? Pastor John encourages single men in ministry to take practical steps while trusting God’s providence.

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Does God Delight in Me? His Pleasure in (Imperfect) Holiness 25.7.2024 03:00

If we could distill God’s will for his people into a simple prayer, we may do no better than an often-repeated plea from Robert Murray M’Cheyne: “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 159).

How often does such a prayer find its place upon your lips? How deeply does such a desire shape your hopes and plans? If the longings of your heart could speak, would any of them cry out, “Make me as holy as I can be”?

God’s desire for our holiness burns through the Scriptures like a purifying fire. Paul would have us think so: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Peter would have us think so: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15–16). Hebrews would have us think so: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

And in a hundred other ways, God would have us think so. Our holiness delights him (Psalm 40:6–8), pleases him (1 Thessalonians 4:1), rises before him like a fragrant offering (Philippians 4:18), elicits his approval and praise (Romans 2:29; 12:1). If you want to please a holy God, be as holy as you can be.

Holiness and Its Hoaxes

Before we consider why holiness makes God happy, ponder for a moment what we even mean by holiness. Like many familiar Bible words, holiness can get lost in a haze of abstraction. And over time, if we’re not careful, we may come to associate the word with images or ideas at odds with the real thing.

Some, for example, may hear holiness and (perhaps subconsciously) think bland or boring. Holiness belongs in a museum or antique shop, hushed and stuffy. True holiness, however, knows nothing of blandness and cannot abide boredom. Scripture speaks of “the splendor of holiness,” of holiness as “glory and beauty” (1 Chronicles 16:29; Exodus 28:2). As Sinclair Ferguson writes, holy people shine with something of God’s own brilliance:

“To sanctify” means that God repossesses persons and things that have been devoted to other uses, and have been possessed for purposes other than his glory, and takes them into his own possession in order that they may reflect his own glory. (The Holy Spirit, 140)

True holiness is breathtakingly beautiful. It participates in God’s own glory — a glory bursting with life and majesty.

Others may hear holiness and think mainly of religious ritual: food laws and temple sacrifices, perhaps, or a devotion to churchly routines. But such was the mistake of many Pharisees — those punctual, precise, “worshiping” bundles of corruption (Matthew 23:25–28). True holiness pierces to the deepest parts of a person; it touches and transforms “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Holiness is a hand that plucks the heart’s hidden strings, filling all of life with heavenly melody. It is not smoke arising from the altar, but faith and love arising from the soul (Psalm 40:6–8).

Then, finally, some may hear holiness and wonder what relevance it holds to daily life. Maybe holiness seems like a cloud: miles above the ground and impossible to grasp. But true holiness has everything to do with everyday life. When Jesus and his apostles call us to holiness, they address our thinking and speaking, our eating and drinking, our spending and saving, our working and resting. Even on the most ordinary day, there never comes a moment when “be holy” doesn’t mean something practical. Holiness embraces and dignifies our daily doings.

And such holiness — beautiful, deep, broad — makes God happy.

God’s Complex Pleasure

Depending on your personality and theological background, the thought of our holiness pleasing God may raise some questions. Some, especially lovers of the doctrine of justification, may wonder, Doesn’t God already delight in me? And others, especially the sensitive and scrupulous, may ask, How could God ever delight in me?

Doesn’t God already delight in me?

For some, the idea that our holiness delights God seems to undermine (or at least sit in tension with) justification by faith alone. Doesn’t God’s delight rest on Christ’s perfect holiness now reckoned to me through faith? Doesn’t he call me “holy and beloved” before I obey (Colossians 3:12) and even after I sin (1 Corinthians 6:11)?

These questions press us toward a helpful distinction. At one level, God has an unshakeable delight in his people because we are united to “his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13), our holy Savior who remains the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). We are in Christ — wrapped in his righteousness, sanctified by his purity — and therefore fully approved in God’s sight. And yet, above this foundation of God’s unchanging favor, we really can please him more or less, depending on how we live. We can grieve the Spirit or gladden him (Ephesians 4:30); we can delight God Almighty or displease him (Ephesians 5:9–10).

The image of fatherly discipline in Hebrews 12 brings these two kinds of pleasure together. All discipline implies some degree of displeasure or disapproval. At the same time, all good discipline springs from deep love. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6). Beneath the displeasure of God’s discipline is his deep and unchanging fatherly affection.

Because he loves us, he responds to our displeasing sins with discipline — and by discipline, he makes us more pleasing. He gives us the security of his everlasting approval in Christ — and amazingly, he also gives us the dignity of becoming the kind of people who will hear his “well done.”

How could God ever delight in me?

Others ask a different question about God’s delight. They understand why holiness pleases God, and they would love to know themselves pleasing before him. But they can’t seem to imagine their holiness — their small, stumbling holiness — ever being pure enough to please him. Maybe in heaven they’ll delight God, but how could they do so now?

I feel the force of the question. Our sins are still many, our present imperfections run deep, and mixed motives taint even our best deeds. This side of heaven, God can always disapprove of something inside us. So it can feel safer to simply take refuge in the righteousness of Christ and wait till we’re perfect to believe ourselves pleasing. But that would be a great mistake.

If we, though trusting in Jesus and seeking to follow him, doubt that God could delight in our holiness, we need to reckon with how often God uses the language of pleasure to describe his posture toward his partly sanctified people. He says brotherly love pleases him (Romans 14:18), sharing with others pleases him (Hebrews 13:16), praying for kings pleases him (1 Timothy 2:3–4), a child’s obedience pleases him (Colossians 3:20), even that we can be “fully pleasing” to him (Colossians 1:10). And in each of these examples (and many more), he is not lying. The holy, holy, holy God is astoundingly, wonderfully pleasable.

Roots of His Approval

If we ask why such imperfect holiness pleases God, we might give several answers. We might remember that our present holiness is nothing less than the emerging character of Christ in us (2 Corinthians 3:18), his image rescued and renewed (Romans 8:29) — and God loves the glory of his Son. We might also remember that our holiness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) — and just as in the beginning, God regards the creative work of his Spirit as “good,” indeed “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Or we might remember, as Richard Sibbes writes, that God is able to take a long view of our holiness, seeing today’s small step as part of a much bigger and more beautiful picture:

Christ values us by what we shall be, and by what we are elected unto. We call a little plant a tree, because it is growing up to be so. “Who has despised the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10). Christ would not have us despise little things. (The Bruised Reed, 17)

Today’s edifying speech, purity of thought, self-denying service, prayerful yearning toward heaven — these are acorns becoming oaks, buds about to bloom, mustard seeds destined to outgrow and outlast the thorns and thistles of our sin. And so they please him.

Yet we can dig still deeper.

Happiness at the Heart

At bottom, we might say that God is happy with our holiness because the heart of true holiness is happiness in God. God made the world so that people like us would find our greatest joy in him and so glorify him as the Greatest Joy in the world— the treasure in the field, the pearl of infinite price, the fairest among ten thousand (and far more). And if we could peel back the layers of a truly holy life, we would find a heart that pulses with such pleasure in God.

People growing in holiness have felt, with Paul, something of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” a worth that makes us more ready to suffer than to sin (Philippians 3:8–10). With Jeremiah, we have left sin’s broken cisterns, drunk deeply from the fountain, and now refuse to leave (Jeremiah 2:13–14). With John, we have taken up the commandments of God and said, with a cry of joy, “Not burdensome!” (1 John 5:3). And with David, we have tasted and seen that God is good (Psalm 34:8) — his presence the height of joy, his right hand the province of pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

Such holiness is beautiful, a flicker of the love between Father and Son, the aroma of heaven’s atmosphere. Such holiness is heart deep, filling our innermost parts with rivers of living water. Such holiness is broad, spreading over life as comprehensively as the waters cover the sea. And such holiness makes God happy.

So, if we want to distill God’s will for his people into a simple prayer, we may do no better than M’Cheyne’s striking line: “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made.” And as we pray, we’ll know what we mean deep down: “Lord, make me as happy in you as a pardoned sinner can be made.”

Go Where God Walks: The Everyday Paths of Astonishing Grace 24.7.2024 03:00

God does not leave us to ourselves after saving us. His grace continues to flow to us through his appointed means: Bible reading, prayer, and fellowship.

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Nursery for Missionaries: The Forgotten Legacy of Old Princeton 24.7.2024 03:00

I am always intrigued when I read the writings of missionaries from previous generations, especially missionaries of the pioneering sort. Where did their initial drive come from? How was their sustaining perseverance instilled in them? Without a doubt, they were, first and foremost, men and women who did not count their lives as precious; they only aimed to finish the work given to them by their God (Acts 20:24). But what of their upbringing, education, peers, teachers, and mentors? What role did these play in their zeal?

Certainly, the parents and mentors of many shaped them to value the call to leave behind home and family for the glory of the King. John Paton and Amy Carmichael serve as good examples here. Others were influenced by a forerunner in missions, such as David Brainerd. His biography and writings arrested men like William Carey, Robert Morrison, and Henry Martyn, eventually guiding them to faraway lands. But the more I read about the history of missions, the more I see the crucial role of institutions, and especially their key leaders, in shaping so many long-term missionaries.

In particular, a breakout session at a recent Radius Conference made me aware of the radical nature of Princeton Seminary as a missions hotbed.

Nursery of Missions

Two centuries ago, Princeton was the jewel of theological education in the English-speaking world. It is no overstatement to say that it was the most known, trusted, and respected seminary of the nineteenth century.

Luminaries like B.B. Warfield, James Boyce, Jonathan Edwards, J. Gresham Machen, and so many others served as professors or studied as students at this venerable institution. And amazingly, in its prime, one out of every three Princeton graduates headed out to be involved in serious long-term missions (Princeton Seminary, 406).

When Princeton was formed, one of the stated pillars of the school was to be a “nursery for missionaries,” and professors led and taught to that end (Princeton Seminary, 139). This intentionality fostered student-led groups that met regularly to pray that some among them would be led to missions. The “Society of Inquiry” dealt with logistical issues in reaching faraway countries, collected language data, and worked steadily to gather a library of books to aid those students setting out to be missionaries. Students also queried active missionaries, asking for information about their field of service, the surrounding people groups, and ways they could pray for the work on the ground.

In short, the faculty of Old Princeton made missions a primary topic of discussion and study, and students caught what the professors prioritized, resulting in over one-third of graduates moving to places where no church existed. Oh, for God to raise up in our day more seminaries, Bible schools, and colleges with the Old Princetonian values!

Schooled by Princeton

Considering that most who will read this article will not help to lead a Christian institution of higher education, what applications can we take from the model of Old Princeton for our churches and other institutions today?

1. Making missions primary helps, not hurts, the church.

David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, is reported to have said, “The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet.” While many would expect a missionary to say as much, hearing the same sentiment from other Christian leaders is rare. The spirit that existed at Old Princeton was alive for Christ-exalting missions, and the faculty at every level bought into it. Archibald Alexander, the seminary’s first president, would remark, “we regard the missionary cause as the greatest beneath the sun” (quoted in John C. Lowrie’s 1876 paper, “Princeton Theological Seminary and Foreign Missions,” 11). This spirit grew the seminary numerically, but more importantly, in zeal.

There exists today, as in earlier days, an unvoiced fear that if a church or seminary pushes missions too hard, the building projects won’t get done, the giving will decline, and some who are needed on the home front will be sent to the field. The problem with this fear is that it views the task of missions through man-centered eyes. If the task of taking the gospel to those peoples still in darkness is merely conjured up by fallen men, then we are right to hold back resources, avoid speaking about it from the pulpit, and generally tamp down the entire enterprise.

But if Christ himself issued the Great Commission, then the God of all grace has stamped his own name on this task, and it remains binding on the church today. He must bring in his sheep that have yet to hear his voice (John 10:16). And his voice, his call of the gospel, comes through God’s ambassadors, as though God himself were making his appeal through men (2 Corinthians 5:20). Far from being a man-centered task, the Great Commission is given by God, is orchestrated by God, and will result in God’s eternal glory.

The church, the school, the seminary that puts the commission of the God of heaven and earth above endowments, above building plans, above succession plans works in harmony with the heart of our God. The institution that makes itself a “nursery for missionaries” will not regret that path. How wonderful for a local congregation to foster sister congregations around the world raised up by men and women whom they have sent! On that great day, the glory accorded to those pastors and congregations will be something to behold.

2. Champion missions from the front.

The astounding legacy of Old Princeton can be measured by what its graduates gave their lives for. But most of the graduates didn’t go into the seminary with missions in mind; they caught the passion of the institution’s leaders. Men like Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, Samuel Miller, and others led from the front.

Listen to what James W. Alexander said in a talk to the seminary students about “calling” in missions:

Candidates for the sacred office [church pastor] are too much accustomed to think, “I will prepare myself to serve God as a preacher in my native land, and if I should be specially moved, and loudly called, I will become a foreign missionary.” Here there is altogether an error, and an error so great, that we need not be surprised to find him who harbors it, as really unfitted for the ministry at home, as he supposes himself to be for the ministry abroad. (Considerations on Foreign Missions, 125–26)

Did you catch that? According to Alexander, if you think you need a special call to go into missions, you’re unsuited for ministry in your home country. This is coming from the leadership!

No amount of zeal from a young person and no depth of history from a missions committee can substitute for a pastor leading his flock into long-term missions. If the pastor isn’t “into it,” it likely won’t happen. There may be the proverbial missions weekend or an offering for some overseas cause, but there will be scant few who leverage their futures to go to the nations unless the church leadership is genuinely leading that way from the front.

I don’t mean every Sunday brings a Matthew 28 or Acts 1 message, but the pastor clearly and regularly puts the burden of reaching those groups who still have no access to the gospel before the congregation. He tailors the church’s book reading so missions is in the mix (good biographies to start with) and ensures that those in the next generation are taken to the right conferences, exposed to missions regularly, and given a chance to see what it might be like to consecrate their lives to the task of cross-cultural church planting. What would the world look like with church leaders who fearlessly lead in “come and die” missions?

Legacy in Foreign Tongues

The lessons from Old Princeton are too good not to be retold. Today, Old Princeton is spoken of most often in regard to its theological acumen and well-known graduates who changed the course of the English-speaking world. But when the King does the final accounting of this school someday, Old Princeton will likely bear a far more glorious legacy — one sung in foreign tongues.

May God raise up more like her for his glory to the ends of the earth.

Love Your Enemies 24.7.2024 03:00

How can we love our enemies? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Matthew 5:43–48 to examine how God’s love and forgiveness provide what we need to love as God commands.

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‘Enter into My Happiness’: Jesus’s Invitation to Infinite Joy 23.7.2024 03:00

Imagine that moment when Jesus first opened his mouth to begin his Sermon on the Mount.

The Gospel of Matthew sets the scene. Jesus has been baptized by John (3:13–17) and endured forty days of wilderness fasting and temptation (4:1–11). He has quietly begun his public ministry in the region of Galilee and called his first disciples (4:18–22). He started by teaching in synagogues. But now as his fame spreads, the crowds swell, and his ministry is increasingly consigned to open air (4:23–25).

Seeing the crowds, Jesus goes up a mountain. The gentle slope will serve as a natural theater where he might be seen, and his words heard, by the masses.

Has humble Galilee ever seen anything like this — anyone like this? Not only does this tradesman’s son heal, but he speaks with a captivating weight. The scribes borrow their authority (as they should) from Scripture as they teach and explain God’s word. But this man, perfectly in sync with Scripture, somehow speaks on par with Scripture — and even in some enigmatic sense, his authority seems to rise above it.

There are whispers. Might this be the prophet to come? Might this be the Messiah himself? It all makes for an electric moment — the air thick with energy and excitement.

A hush ripples through the crowd. He is about to speak. What will Jesus say? How will he start? What will be the first topic he addresses at such a poignant moment?

He opens his mouth and says, “Blessed . . .”

Ninefold Happiness

Remarkably, Jesus’s first topic — his repeated first topic — is to the blessedness, the happiness, of his hearers. He assumes they want to be happy, and he makes an extended appeal — a holy, perceptive, profound appeal — to their happiness. Not just once but over and over again.

The refrain of these precious opening words, which will come to be known as “the Beatitudes,” addresses the deep and enduring desire of the human heart to be happy — that is, blessed.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. . . . Blessed are those who mourn. . . . Blessed are the meek. . . . Blessed . . . Blessed . . . Blessed . . . Blessed . . . Blessed . . . Blessed . . . (Matthew 5:3–11)

Nine times Jesus makes his stunningly hedonistic appeal and tops it all off with the exhortation — for those in the face of persecution no less — “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (5:12).

The opening salvos of Jesus’s most famous sermon promise true happiness. His refrain is reward; his charge is “rejoice and be glad.” Many of us today are so familiar with these Beatitudes that we miss the shock, the scandal, the gall of a preacher unleashing such a pleasure-seeking manifesto on an unsuspecting audience.

Our Blessed God

Part of the reason we miss this edge in Jesus’s message is because our word blessed has lost much of its power. In the first century, blessed was no overused hashtag. It wasn’t Christianese, suffering from overuse and shallowness. “Blessed” in the Hebrew Scriptures was “the man [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord” — so rich and full and sweet a delight that “on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:1–2). Blessed was no small promise from the mouth of Jesus to the ears of the crowds.

The Greeks had mused about the “blessedness” (makarismos) of their gods as “the transcendent happiness of a life beyond care, labor, and death . . . the happy state of the gods above earthly sufferings and labors” (TDNT). In 1 Timothy, Paul applies the term to the Father of Jesus Christ. He is “the blessed God” who has entrusted Paul with “the gospel of his glory” (1:11). He is “the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords” (6:15).

Accordingly, Peter van Mastricht, favorite systematician of Jonathan Edwards, would come along centuries later and define divine blessedness as God’s

perfect enjoyment of his own self, from which there is said to be fullness of joys with his face (Psalm 16:11). In it is contained not only an exact knowledge of his own self, a knowledge proper to him alone (Romans 11:34; 1 Corinthians 2:11), but also a fullness, repose [rest], and joy in himself, in the communion of the persons, and in all his works (Proverbs 8:30; Matthew 17:5). (Theoretical-Practical Theology, 2:489)

In other words, to be God is to be happy — infinitely, unshakably happy. Because what makes him happiest — who makes him happiest — is infinite and unshakable: himself. God is not an idolater; he has no greater joy than himself. He is supreme being — highest, infinitely so, in value, glory, beauty, and happiness. God is far and away, utterly unrivaled, the most valuable and most delightful reality. And before anything else existed, through his creative mind and hands, he was fully satisfied in himself. He alone is the bottomless source of all delight, even for himself. He is God, and to be God means to possess and enjoy infinite bliss. And apparently, to be inclined to share it.

Our Blessing God

What’s so stunning in Jesus’s repeated call to true happiness is that it presupposes God’s willingness, even eagerness, to extend his own happiness to his creatures. The blessedness Jesus promises is the blessedness of God himself shared with his people. In fact, as his disciples and their expanding circle come to learn, Jesus himself stands among them as the fully human (and divine) expression of God’s happiness.

Jesus comes as an extension of his Father’s own blessedness, and he offers that blessedness to those who hear him in faith. The kingdom of heaven — so prominent in Jesus’s teaching — is, first and foremost, the sphere of God’s happy smile and favor.

Unexpected Conditions

Still, the repeated invitation to such blessedness is not yet the end of the surprise. Nine unexpected, seemingly upside-down qualifications follow Jesus’s ninefold promise of God-given happiness. Counter to our natural expectations, these promises are not for the strong, the glib, the proud, the vindicated, the exacting, the worldly triumphant. This happiness, the happiness that comes from God himself, is on offer to the weak, the lowly, the despised, the ones who look foolish and shameful in the eyes of the world —

the poor in spirit . . . those who mourn . . . the meek . . . those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . . the merciful . . . the pure in heart . . . the peacemakers . . . those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake . . . . (Matthew 5:3–10)

The blessed God is not into icing the cakes of otherwise happy people. He takes the empty and fills them, from the very bottom, with his surpassing blessedness. He takes the needy and shares with them his own boundless bliss. He recruits those who lack, that he might fill them. He receives the dependent, that his own joy in them might be seen to be as rich and full and thick as divine joy really is.

The happy God, in his fullness and bounty, in his infinite joy and delight, generously overflows to give, enrich, comfort, feed, extend mercy, show himself, adopt, vindicate, and reward all who will abandon the pretense of being fine without him and gladly receive the lavish abundance of his grace and mercy.

Happiness Rewards the Humble

Jesus’s opening lines in this sermon call us to acknowledge the depth of our emptiness, recognize the extent of our neediness, even glory in our lack and our dependence, and acclaim the fullness of God’s generous provision and contagious happiness.

He is both the blessed God and the blessing God, who sent his own Son not only to speak of our blessedness in him but to secure it. The happy God is the giving God — giving mercy, the kingdom, the whole earth, and great reward (Matthew 5:3, 5, 7, 12). He comforts and satisfies (5:4, 6). He reveals his own heart to his children and calls them his sons (5:8–9).

This happy God and Father makes his sun rise, and sends his life-giving rain, even on the evil and unjust (Matthew 5:45–46). He rewards those who seek him in secret (6:4, 6, 17). Indeed, he knows what his children need before they ask, and he is eager to give good things to those who ask (6:8, 32; 7:11). He feeds them far better than the birds (6:26) and clothes them far better than the lilies (6:30). He gives daily bread, forgives debts, and delivers from evil (6:11–13, 15).

“Blessed . . . Blessed . . . Blessed . . .” Jesus says. And he invites us into the very happiness of God.