Jon Bloom's Blog, page 11

No One Ever Spoke Like This Man: The Unexpected Words of Jesus

“No one ever spoke like this man.” There is a brief, tense conversation recorded in John’s Gospel that encapsulates, in certain ways, the last two thousand years of Jesus’s confounding impact on world history.

Given Jesus’s troubling and growing influence on the Jewish public, the chief priests and Pharisees decided to send officers to arrest Jesus (John 7:32). The officers, however, returned empty-handed. When the furious Pharisees asked why, the officers responded, “No one ever spoke like this man” (John 7:46). This dumbfounded them. Even the officers were infatuated with Jesus! You can hear the religious leaders’ exasperation:

Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed. (John 7:47–49)

This pattern has recurred over and over, throughout history, with what Jesus of Nazareth said and did.

His Confounding Words

Leaders and scholars have repeatedly and relentlessly tried to bring charges against Jesus, to expose him as a heretic, or a lunatic, or a fraud, or a misunderstood political revolutionary, or an opiate of the masses, or a vassal of imperialism, or as his disconsolate disciples’ legendary wish-projection upon the cosmos. But despite all their best efforts, Jesus repeatedly resists arrest, confounding crowd after crowd, and generation after generation: No one ever spoke like this man.

What is it about Jesus that makes him speak like no other? Of course, there isn’t a single answer to this question. Countless volumes have been written, and Jesus’s uniqueness still hasn’t been exhausted. But in John 7, Jesus himself clues us in on one crucial truth that governed all he said (and didn’t say):

The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. (John 7:18)

Key to understanding the unique power of Jesus’s words is understanding why he spoke them.

Why He Said Everything He Said

In a previous discussion with Jewish leaders, Jesus told them, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). In other words, one can look long in the right place and still miss the most important truths.

It is possible to spend a lifetime theorizing and debating why Jesus said what he did and miss what he actually said about what made his words unique and unforgettable. Here’s a sampling:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19).
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30).
“I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:43–44).
“My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me” (John 7:16).
“The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood” (John 7:18).
“I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28).

All of these statements (and more) reveal what motivated everything Jesus said and did. His one great goal in life, his one all-consuming passion, was to glorify his Father by speaking only what the Father told him to speak and doing only what the Father directed him to do. We hear this clearly in his priestly prayer just hours before his trial and crucifixion:

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:4–5)

Jesus was more concerned for the glory of God his Father than anything else. Jesus did not fear people — he “did not entrust himself to them” (John 2:24) and he did “not receive glory from [them]” (John 5:41). He loved and feared his Father. And this overriding pursuit of God’s glory freed him to say only what needed to be said when it needed to be said — and it made what he said so powerful and frequently unpredictable.

What Would You Have Said?

One way to see the radical freedom with which Jesus spoke is to put yourself in Jesus’s place in certain instances in the Gospel narratives and imagine what you honestly would have said, given all that was at stake. The courage and faith of Jesus to say certain things (and not say others) is remarkable.

If you had been Jesus that night Nicodemus, a sympathetic Pharisee who could be a powerful and needed ally, visited him with questions, would you have responded with confusing answers like, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3)?

If you had been Jesus that day near Sychar, sitting by Jacob’s well, when (1) an unescorted woman, (2) who was a Samaritan, and (3) a discredited moral outcast even among her own outcast people, showed up, would you have trusted her to be among first people to whom you explicitly disclosed your Messiahship (John 4:26)?

If you had been Jesus that day a paralyzed man was brought to him, knowing full well how blasphemous it would sound to the religious leaders present, would you have had the courage to say, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven” (Matthew 9:2)?

If you had been Jesus on that Sabbath day when the Pharisees rebuked him for allowing his disciples to pick and eat grain, would you have responded, “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. . . . For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:6, 8)?

If you had been Jesus in tense discussions with religious leaders, would you have uttered such incendiary truths like, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), or “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30)?

Would you have told Simon the Pharisee that the immoral woman inappropriately touching your feet had a greater love for God than he did (Luke 7:36–49)? Would you have told the spiritually sincere rich young man that he needed to give all his riches away to the poor to be saved (Mark 10:17–22)? Would you have called your most devoted disciple “Satan” (Mark 8:33)? Would you have sealed your own brutal death by making it impossible for Pilate, who was trying to prevent your crucifixion, to prevent it (John 18:28–40)?

Unexpectedly Tender and Tough

No one ever spoke like this man. Jesus was stunningly and unexpectedly tender toward people condemned under the law, like a woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11). And he was stunningly and unexpectedly tough on those who appeared to keep the law most rigorously, like calling Jewish leaders children of the devil (John 8:44). He delivered Gentile girls from demons (Matthew 15:21–28), kindly blessed “bothersome” children (Luke 18:15–17), and called scribes and Pharisees hell-bound “serpents” (Matthew 23:33).

Why did Jesus say these things? Because he was pursuing his Father’s glory by faithfully saying only what his Father’s honor led him to say. His goal was to reveal the Father to those given eyes to see (Luke 10:22). Seeking his Father’s glory, and not his own, freed him to say what needed to be said (John 8:28) and constrained him from saying what didn’t need to be said — at least not yet (John 16:12). And with regard to his own glory, he trusted his Father to glorify him (John 17:5). Jesus humbled himself under his Father’s mighty hand and trusted his Father to glorify him at the proper time (1 Peter 5:6).

Jesus spoke like no one else because he pursued his Father’s glory like no one else.

What Frees Your Tongue

How do you define Christlikeness? Do you know how Jesus defined it? Listen to how he prayed for his disciples, and for us:

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:17–21)

To be like Jesus is to be sanctified — set apart for God’s holy use — in the truth of God’s word (John 17:17), which becomes our word (John 17:20). The most Christlike people have “the word of Christ” dwelling in them richly (Colossians 3:16), and they speak what should be said, and refrain from speaking what should not be said (Ephesians 4:29). The most Christlike people seek God’s glory more than anything else, and this pursuit is what governs what they say.

The glory we seek has a great deal to do with what we choose to say or not say. When our primary pursuit is our own glory, we will hardly ever say anything that might endanger it. What others think of us will dictate our words (John 5:44). We will speak like everyone else speaks for the reasons everyone else speaks. What frees our tongues for God is what freed Jesus’s tongue for God. He sought the Father’s glory and trusted the Father to glorify him. If our tongue is tied, it very well could be that we value our glory above God’s.

One of the great freedoms for which “Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1) is the freedom from the tyranny of pursuing our own glory. True freedom is pursuing God’s glory and trusting the Father, like Jesus did, to glorify us in the most satisfying ways at the proper time.

The Lovely Insufficiency of Gratitude: What Thanksgiving Can’t Do for You

Thankfulness is a wonderful virtue. It is among the most morally beautiful of the human affections, and perhaps among the most undervalued. When we really feel grateful, we find it a delightful and refreshing experience. When we observe it authentically in someone else, we find it admirable. Like a glorious sunset, we don’t need to be convinced of the loveliness of thankfulness.

What makes gratitude so beautiful is its rare combination of humility and joy. Like real love, real thankfulness displaces human selfishness — it’s impossible to feel conceited or conniving and feel truly thankful at the same time. When thankfulness should be present but isn’t (in us or someone else), we know something is wrong or disordered.

When it comes to God, few realities fan the flames of our love for and worship of him like gratitude. That’s why thanksgiving is commanded and exhorted so often in the Bible:

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre. For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy. (Psalm 92:1–4)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:16–17)

We might ask, though, if God is so good to us, if it’s so good to give thanks to the Lord, why would we need to be commanded to be grateful? Wouldn’t we just naturally be grateful?

Spiritually Healthy Prescription

We all know the answer to that question: no. We know how often we “naturally” lack appropriate feelings of gratitude. If we’re willing to look long enough, we realize the reason for our chronic ungratefulness most often has to do with where we’re focusing our attention: what we’re afraid of, disappointments we’ve experienced, ways we’ve been hurt, persons we envy, self-centered desires, and on and on — things on which we’re naturally inclined to dwell.

God’s most repeated commands in the Bible, such as “give thanks,” are not given to us to perform out of a mere sense of duty. The commands of God are life-giving prescriptions for our spiritual health. They are given to us to increase our happiness in God, because God loves us. When God commands us to give thanks, not only is he instructing us to do what is right; he is at the same time directing our attention away from things that are draining our hope and fueling our discouragement, to what will fill us with hope and fuel our courage (Romans 15:13). The commands are themselves graces.

In the two texts I referenced above, we can see what thanksgiving produces: joy-inspired worship — “You, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy” (Psalm 92:4) — and spiritual encouragement — “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).

The very practice of giving thanks directs our soul’s attention away from what burdens us toward the great Source of unearned, undeserved, powerful, abounding, and sustaining grace (2 Corinthians 9:8). Giving thanks also helps us see that grace with fresh awareness and renewed hope and joy. That’s what thanksgiving is for: to both give God the glory he deserves (Psalm 29:2) and to lift yokes from us that feel so heavy in order that we might receive joyful rest for our souls (Matthew 11:28–29).

What Thanksgiving Is Not For

But there’s something gratitude was not designed to do: motivate our obedience to God. If this sounds wrong, you may, like me, have been on the receiving end of some mistaken teaching about how gratitude really works.

Numerous times in my early life I heard Christians say some variation of God has done so much for you; you should be willing to do much for him. In other words, out of thankfulness for all God’s grace toward me, I should follow and obey him. Something about the idea always seemed a bit off to me. I knew that feeling gratitude for all God had done for me was right, even if I wrongly didn’t feel it, but trying to make gratitude inspire a life of obedience just wouldn’t work. All the effort seemed to inspire was a sense of demotivating guilt.

Then John Piper filled in some missing pieces to my puzzle by explaining the biblical concept of “future grace.” He said, “Nowhere in the Bible is gratitude connected explicitly with obedience as a motivation. We do not find the phrase ‘out of gratitude’ or ‘in gratitude’ for acts toward God.” What do we find instead? That when God wants to motivate us to obey him, he calls us to live by faith.

Text after text after text showed that the Bible describes Christian obedience as an “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5), a “work of faith” (1 Thessalonians 1:3), “[living] by faith” (Galatians 2:20), “[walking] by faith” (2 Corinthians 5:7), “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6), and more. The Bible never describes Christian obedience as the obedience of gratitude. It’s faith in what God promises to be for us and do for us now and in the future that motivates our obedience, not gratitude for what God has done in the past.

The lights really came on for me when John explained it this way:

Grace is not only a past experience of pardon; it is a future experience of power to do what God commands us to do. This is why gratitude for past grace is not the fuel for today’s obedience. You can’t run your car on gratitude for yesterday’s gas. You need today’s gas for today’s trip. You need today’s grace for today’s obedience. And the pump is not gratitude but faith in future grace.

Let Gratitude Spark Your Faith

Thankfulness and trust, gratitude and faith, have a dynamic relationship, but distinct functions in the soul. That’s why we frequently see them mentioned together in Scripture, like in Psalm 9:

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. (Psalm 9:1–2)

The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. (Psalm 9:9–10)

Do you see the connection? The psalmist recounts with thankfulness all the past wonderful deeds of the Lord and therefore resolves to put his trust (faith) in the Lord in the troubles coming his way. He’s not trying to make gratitude motivate his ongoing obedience; he’s stoking his faith in God’s future grace by remembering with thankfulness the past grace God has provided.

Thanksgiving is wonderfully healthy for our souls. It redirects our attention from focusing on life-depleting and faith-shrinking concerns to focusing on God in Christ, who is our life (Colossians 3:4), by recalling the varied graces we have received from him through the supreme grace of the cross. Gratitude inspires joyful worship and sparks our faith.

But we can’t run our car on gratitude for yesterday’s gas. We need tomorrow’s gas to keep going tomorrow. And the gas that keeps us going is faith in God’s “precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:4), faith in God’s future grace. So, give thanks today with your whole heart for all you have received from God, and let it do its work to encourage your trust in him for all you will need tomorrow.

Read the Bible with Your Heart

We cannot truly read the Bible without patient and rigorous engagement of our minds. That’s probably obvious to us. But we will not have read it well, not as God intended us to read it, without eager, even relentless, engagement of our hearts. It requires more faith, effort, prayer, humility, vulnerability, and often time to read God’s word with our hearts, but that’s because the heart is precisely where God wants his word to land.

What does it mean to read the Bible with your heart? Before I explain, I’ll point to an example, because a good example is often a great explainer. And the example comes from the Bible itself.

With My Whole Heart

Psalm 119 is a (long) song of wholehearted love and desire for God. And if you read it with an engaged mind, you’ll hear the psalmist sing of how and why he received God’s word with a relentlessly, even desperately, engaged heart. It’s worth reading the whole psalm, but here are a few tastes:

“Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart” (Psalm 119:2).

“With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!” (Psalm 119:10).

“Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart” (Psalm 119:34).

“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).

“Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors” (Psalm 119:24).

“I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes” (Psalm 119:47–48).

When we read Psalm 119, two truths are unmistakable: the word of God is for the heart of man, and the way to the heart is through the mind.

Treasure to Be Loved

In Luke 10:27, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, where Moses says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Any time, however, the Gospels record Jesus quoting this text (see also Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30), Jesus adds the word mind, which Moses didn’t include. Perhaps this is because the Hebrew hearers of Moses’s day understood implicitly that affections included reason, while the Greco-influenced mixed crowds of Jesus’s day needed the clarification.

Whatever Jesus’s reason for adding “mind,” it is clear that both reason and affections are crucial to loving God. But there is a hierarchy. God wants our hearts, because, as Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). God is not merely an idea to be pondered, but a person to be loved — the supreme treasure to be supremely treasured.

God’s way to our affections (heart) is through our understanding (mind). So, when we read the Bible, we read it with our hearts engaged, because God’s word is primarily for our hearts.

Read to See Glory

As Christians, we rightly stress the importance of reading the Bible. In stressing this importance, however, we can easily fall into a subtle, deceptive misunderstanding of why it’s important. The subtle misunderstanding goes something like this: if we read the Bible regularly, God will be pleased with us, and therefore we can expect his blessing. As if the act of reading, rather than the purpose of reading, warrants God’s favor.

What’s deceptive about this is that it bears such a close resemblance to the truth. Regular, disciplined reading of the Bible is a means of great blessing from God. But not because performing the act of reading merits his favor. If we read the Bible this way, it’s not much different than the Muslim who practices the disciplines of the Five Pillars to merit Allah’s favor. This is apparently how many leaders in Jesus’s day approached the Scriptures. Listen to Jesus’s rebukes:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:27–28).

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39–40)

God is not interested in our Bible reading as some kind of ritual to perform as proof of our piety. He wants us to read the Bible so that we will see him! God wants us to see his glory, again and again.

The Bible is where the most important glories of the triune God shine brightest and clearest — especially the glory of Jesus Christ (John 1:14), who is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and through whom comes “grace and truth” (John 1:17).

This makes the Bible itself shine with a peculiar glory, worth mining deeply because of the priceless wealth it contains. As John Piper says,

In all the details and particulars of what we find in the Bible — Old Testament and New — the aim of reading is always to see the worth and beauty of God. Notice that I say “in all the details and particulars.” There is no other way to see the glory. God’s greatness does not float over the Bible like a gas. It does not lurk in hidden places separate from the meaning of words and sentences. It is seen in and through the meaning of texts. (Reading the Bible Supernaturally, 96)

God’s glory is seen in and through the meaning of texts. That’s why we pray, “Make me understand the way of your precepts” (Psalm 119:27). Because understanding God’s word is the means of God’s word getting stored up in our hearts (Psalm 119:11).

Don’t Read Just to See

God wants our hearts in Bible reading, not just the attention of our minds. As important as seeing God’s glory is, it’s not enough. God wants us to see his glory so that we will savor his glory. And “if there is no true seeing of the glory of God, there can be no true savoring of the glory of God” (96). Charles Spurgeon said it this way:

Certainly, the benefit of reading must come to the soul by the way of the understanding. . . . The mind must have illumination before the affections can properly rise towards their divine object. . . . There must be knowledge of God before there can be love to God: there must be a knowledge of divine things, as they are revealed, before there can be an enjoyment of them. (100)

The “love to God” and “an enjoyment of divine things” are what God most wants us to experience as a result of reading our Bibles, and neither happens without knowledge. Knowledge is for the sake of love and joy.

When I said the word of God is for the heart of man, I meant it is for, to borrow from the hymn, the “joy of every longing heart.” Bible reading “in all the details and particulars” is frequently rigorous work. It can be quite difficult. At times it can even be disturbing. When we deal with the Bible, we’re dealing with the infinite and mysterious mind of God. His thoughts are not our thoughts; his ways not our ways (Isaiah 55:8–9). But ultimately, if we really understand why God has given us a Book, reading his word becomes a hedonistic pursuit. What we’re after is the pleasure our souls are designed to enjoy most: the savoring of God’s glory.

Read Until You See and Savor

Those who have known God best, and loved him most, have understood the crucial importance of savoring God deeply through seeing God clearly in his word.

George Müller, when reflecting on his remarkable, demanding life of prayerful dependence on God for the sake of the Bristol orphans, recalled an important moment early in his ministry: “I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord” (100). He was speaking about his daily, disciplined Bible reading and prayer each morning. This was his oasis of refreshment. Time in the word functioned like a ballast keeping his ship upright in a life of significant stress and at times turbulent storms. “Unless some unusual obstacle hindered him, he would not rise from his knees until sight had become savoring” (100).

George Müller read the Bible like the psalmist who wrote Psalm 119: with a rigorously engaged mind and a relentlessly engaged heart. And so must we. We read the Bible with our minds to see the glory of God, and with our hearts to savor the glory of God. We pass the Bible through our minds to store it in our hearts, because our hearts are with our treasure. And if possible, we don’t stop looking until our hearts are “happy in the Lord” — until we feel fresh joy in some aspect of who God is and what he has done for us in Christ.

We Dare Not Ignore the Devil

A.W. Tozer once memorably said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Though I agree with C.S. Lewis’s response to this line of thinking — that “how God thinks of us is . . . infinitely more important” than how we think of him — Tozer’s point is still crucial: “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God” (The Knowledge of the Holy, 1). How we think about God determines how we live.

Now, what comes into your mind when you think about Satan and his demons? Certainly, it is not the most important thing about you. And what God thinks about Satan and demons is infinitely more important than what we think of them. But what we think about the demonic realm is certainly not unimportant.

What do we think of what God has to say about the existence and activity of devils in Scripture? How seriously do we take what he says — not just in creed but in deed? How much does a conscious awareness of spiritual warfare functionally factor into our daily life? How does it affect how we pray? How does it inform the ways we see our areas of chronic temptation, fears, family dynamics, church conflicts, physical and mental illnesses, inhibited gospel fruitfulness, geopolitical events? What kinds of strategic spiritual action do we take in response to these things?

These are important questions. Because how we think about satanic forces also determines in significant ways how we live.

Are We Ignorant of His Designs?

The New Testament authors wrote with a profound awareness of the cosmic war they were involved in. They determined to “not be outwitted by Satan; for [they were] not ignorant of his designs” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

“The devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41) factored prominently in Jesus’s life, teaching, and miracles. From his temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry (Matthew 4:1–11) to the events surrounding his crucifixion (John 13:27), Satan and his forces were an ever-present reality. Jesus taught that demons actively enslave people (Luke 13:16), actively seek to gain influence over religious leaders and institutions (John 8:44), and actively oppose and seek to undermine and corrupt gospel work (Luke 8:12). He also taught that Satan understands his massive influence in the world as his “kingdom” (Luke 11:17–18). When Jesus’s closest disciples described his miraculous ministry, they said, “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38).

When Jesus commissioned his early apostolic leaders, he sent them into a world of unbelievers “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). They understood that they — and all Christians — are involved in a war in which “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

And they repeatedly warned Christians to “be sober-minded [and] watchful” because “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). They did not want us to be ignorant of Satan’s designs.

The question we need to ask ourselves, especially we Christians in the West, is this: Are we ignorant of Satan’s designs?

Test Case

Here’s a test case. How did you emotionally respond to my earlier mention of “physical and mental illnesses” as possibly being caused or exacerbated by demonic beings? Did it provoke some level of cultural embarrassment because the idea sounds so unscientific, even superstitious? Or did it provoke some defensive anger because, especially when it comes to mental illness, you want to emphatically state that no one should assume the affliction is demonic?

Now, before any qualification, let’s take a moment to assess our emotional reactions. If we feel some embarrassment, why? If we feel some defensive anger, why? What’s fueling our responses? How much are they fueled by an accurate biblical understanding of demonic involvement, and how much are they fueled by our personal experiences and/or our culture’s naturalistic assumptions about everything?

It’s important that we query our responses and not accept them too easily. They might expose an unbiblical imbalance or blind spot. Every era has its spiritual blind spots, and demonic forces will, by all means, capitalize on them. The first century had its blind spots, and we have ours. We are naïve to think they don’t significantly affect us. That’s why the Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament writers to instruct Christians of all eras to be sober-minded and watchful, and not be ignorant of satanic schemes.

No, certainly not all physical and mental illness is caused or exacerbated by demonic beings. The Bible doesn’t teach this, nor have the vast majority of Christians throughout history believed this. This is why at Desiring God, along with many resources on spiritual warfare, we also have many resources on mental illness, disease, and disability.

Cost of Supernaturalism

But Western evangelicals in general are not in danger of an overapplication of demonization. We are far more in danger of under-application — of a functional, unbiblical naturalism. This is partly due to cultural blind-spot assumptions. But increasingly, it is also a result of the growing cultural cost of supernaturalism.

We live in post-Enlightenment cultures that consider the biblical, supernatural worldview to be a foolish religious hangover from the Dark Ages. The very idea of a demon-haunted world is ridiculed. But not only is it considered foolish; it is quickly being considered abusive to insinuate that a person might be afflicted by a demon. From a naturalistic perspective, such an assertion only heaps shame on someone already suffering — all because people like us aren’t willing to let go of an archaic worldview whose time is long past.

This packs an emotional punch, often landing on our spiritual solar plexus. Suddenly, the issue is binary: either demons exist and the denial of them (explicitly or functionally) is cruel, or demons don’t exist and the diagnosis of them is cruel. None of us wants to be cruel; we want to help, not harm, the afflicted. But one side of the binary is cruel. One might accurately call it demonic.

Stand Firm

For Western Christians, this means if we want to seriously engage in the Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) and see many people “turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18), we must be willing to endure the cultural shaming (perhaps eventually worse) that will come from taking demons seriously. We must be more willing to be considered fools than cruelly leave people the victims of enslaving evil.

How we think about satanic forces, and how seriously we take God’s instruction to us about them, determines how we live. The more aligned we are with the Bible’s view of reality, the more faithfully we will follow Jesus, the more spiritually helpful we will be to people, and the more damage we will wreak on the domain of darkness. But we also will bear the reproach Jesus endured (Hebrews 13:13).

The Bible is a robustly supernatural book. The spiritual war between God and his angels and the devil and his angels, and human beings on both sides of the conflict, fills its pages from cover to cover. And here’s the way it instructs us to live:

Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. (Ephesians 6:10–13)

Let’s take this seriously. Let’s not leave people captives to demonic schemes. And let’s stand firm in the assault.

The Faithful Will Look Foolish — for Now

The wisdom of God is often only fully seen in retrospect. When man’s wisdom has passed as a fad, the mountain of God’s truth remains. Whereas time exposes the world’s wisdom, it will only vindicate God’s — and anyone who faithfully declared it to the world.

If you want a good picture of what the church looks like before the world, think of Jesus before Pontius Pilate. Put yourself as an observer in the governor’s headquarters that morning, witnessing the interaction between the two. Who appeared weak and who appeared strong? Who sounded foolish and who sounded sensible? Which one seemed to be pursuing the best outcome for all involved?

The Governor and the Lord

“Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33).

“My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

You have got to be kidding! Pilate rubbed his eyes in exasperation.

For Pontius Pilate, the man standing before him was a major inconvenience. The Roman governor’s agenda for the day hadn’t included trying some renegade rabbi in trouble with the Sanhedrin. And first thing in the morning! The council wanted him to pronounce this man guilty of capital treason. Today. Before the Passover. Pilate resented the pressure. His patience strained at the seams.

He’d heard of this controversial Jesus before, but hadn’t felt a need to bother with him. The intelligence he’d received profiled just another Jewish mystical teacher. Some claimed he had miracle powers. But there’d been no reports of Jesus denouncing the emperor or calling for revolt against Rome. Apparently, he had even inspired some Roman soldiers, but there were no accounts of disloyalty as a result.

Easy Way Out

It wasn’t that Pilate had qualms over dispatching a Jewish troublemaker when needed. But this situation gave him a bad feeling. Jerusalem was swelling with Passover celebrants — not a good time for a political “dispatch.” If Jesus himself hadn’t called for revolt, executing him just might. He was popular with the peasants, and the Jewish zealots would seize any opportune moment.

Yet Jesus wasn’t helping his own cause. Had he no political savvy at all? In asking, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate had essentially offered him a quick exit from execution. All Jesus needed to give were a couple quick, clear denials and he’d be off Rome’s excruciating hook. The Sanhedrin would have to solve their own problem, and the governor could get on with the day’s important work.

But Jesus’s reply — “My kingdom is not of this world” — just made the unnecessary situation worse. Come on, man. If you don’t want to die, don’t mention a kingdom — imaginary or not — to the Roman governor! Now Pilate was forced to probe further.

Who Was Delusional?

“So you are a king?” Pilate asked. Jesus answered him, “You [rightly] say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).

Pilate couldn’t help a sardonic snort. Just what he thought: a Jewish mystic with his head in the clouds. Delusional? Clearly. But a real political threat to Rome or anyone else? Clearly not. Jesus was a King of Truth whose only subjects were those willing to listen to his voice. Pilate figured they would never amount to enough for a rebellion. Plus, Jesus’s servants didn’t want to fight worldly powers (John 18:36). This was religious madness, not treason. Jesus didn’t need to be killed.

Then Pilate had an idea. There was a way out of this mess, a way to release Jesus so Rome looked benevolent, the Sanhedrin saved face, and the Jewish masses would be placated: the Passover prisoner release! As he got up to pitch the idea to the Jews, he sarcastically remarked to the King of Truth, “What is truth?” (John 18:38)

World and Church

Sitting in his headquarters that morning, Pilate had the full authority of the Roman Empire behind him. Jesus appeared to have no one; he stood there “despised and rejected” (Isaiah 53:3).

Pilate’s words must have sounded reasonable, given the apparent context. Jesus’s words must have sounded delusional and strange. Pilate seemed to be pursuing a politically pragmatic course that would stave off an unjust execution, frustrating but not alienating the Jewish council, and keeping the civil peace in Jerusalem. Jesus inexplicably seemed to do nothing to avoid crucifixion.

However, with the benefit of retrospect, we see that Jesus was strong and Pilate was weak: Pilate only wielded authority by God’s decree (John 19:11). We see that Jesus was wise and Pilate was foolish: the governor only found Jesus’s words unintelligible because he heard them as a “natural man” (1 Corinthians 2:14 NASB). And we see that Jesus, not Pilate, knew what would make for the best outcome of all involved: Pilate had no idea of the peace Jesus was pursuing for billions as he sought merely to keep the peace of the city.

This is the position of the church in the world. Though God will station his people in places of governmental influence as “Josephs” and “Daniels” and “those of Caesar’s household” (Philippians 4:22), the church will not wield the power of the world. It will stand in the weak places, saying truths that sound delusional to worldly authorities, and pursuing aims that will be misunderstood and misinterpreted. But its position will, in reality, be strong, because “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

You Will Be My Witnesses

As Jesus witnessed to his governing authorities, and as Paul witnessed to his (and was told, “Paul, you are out of your mind,” Acts 26:24), so Jesus tells us, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). For some of us, that will literally mean “stand[ing] before governors and kings for [his] sake” (Mark 13:9).

But whether we’re called to stand before government officials or coworkers or neighbors or family members, what we have to say often will, in the immediate context, sound strange. We will feel how foolish it sounds to them, and we will feel our apparently weak position.

That’s when we need to remember Jesus before Pilate. What matters is not how things appear and sound in the awkward or even deathly serious moment. What matters is being faithful to the truth — even if that audacious-sounding claim only elicits a sardonic snort. What is ultimately significant, what God is actually doing in and through that moment, is frequently only seen in retrospect.

Have Mercy on Those Who Doubt

When the eleven disciples saw Jesus after his resurrection, at the moment of receiving the Great Commission, in fact, Matthew tells us “they worshiped him, but some doubted” (Matthew 28:17). Do you find it remarkable that some disciples doubted this extraordinary phenomenon? I find it both remarkable and eminently reasonable. And comforting, because we find ourselves in good company when we and our brothers and sisters also struggle with doubts.

The Greek word translated “doubt” here (distazō) often refers to a wavering, hesitant uncertainty — a general lack of confidence. What made some of the disciples waver on that Galilean mountain? Matthew doesn’t tell us, which is the Lord’s mercy, I think. I imagine each doubter’s doubt varied to some degree, depending on his experience and temperament. Suffice it to say, strange encounters with the resurrected Son of God and the scope of the mission he was giving them, colliding with all their prior conceptions and contrasting with their experience of normal life, would have been a surreal experience for any normal person. It would be strange if some didn’t doubt.

Doubting Disciples

Scholars debate whether or not members of the eleven doubted or whether the doubters were those among the broader group of disciples who may have accompanied the eleven to Galilee. The text seems to point to the eleven, but it doesn’t really matter. Doubt was present among the eleven and the broader group on and after Easter Sunday.

We know Thomas refused to believe Jesus’s resurrection till he saw Jesus with his own eyes (John 20:25–29). We know members of the eleven struggled to believe even what their own eyes saw when the resurrected Jesus appeared to them (Luke 24:36–43). And we know that members of the broader group of disciples doubted the initial resurrection reports they heard (Luke 24:13–34).

The remarkable and comforting fact is that some of Jesus’s first disciples, who personally saw and heard so many amazing things, doubted. Is it any surprise that some of us also experience a wavering, hesitant uncertainty — doubt — that what we have seen, heard, and experienced is all real?

This is why I’m so thankful that Jesus’s brother, Jude, wrote, “Have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 22).

Jude’s Mercy

The brief book of Jude is mostly a sober warning against false teachers. Like John’s epistles, Peter’s second epistle, and Hebrews, Jude wants us to feel the seriousness of their perversion of and departure from the gospel so that we will persevere in faithfulness.

But in his closing remarks, he says, “Have mercy on those who doubt.” Jude uses the Greek word (diakrinō) that also means a wavering uncertainty, and as one dictionary puts it, “being at odds with oneself.” In other words, be merciful to those who are struggling over the competing truth claims. Don’t crush them or condemn them; help them.

I can’t help but think that Jude recalled how Jesus once showed mercy to him. Because there was a time when he doubted his divine brother’s claims, and Jesus at some point helped him (John 7:5). And there are numerous other examples of Jesus’s mercy to doubters.

Jesus’s Diverse Mercy

The New Testament uses a number of different Greek words for doubt, because not all doubt is the same and not all doubters are the same. Therefore, mercy toward doubters doesn’t always look the same. Some cases call for patient, compassionate understanding and encouragement. Some cases call for an exhortation or even a rebuke. That’s why we see a range of responses from Jesus toward those who doubted.

John the Baptist

In Matthew 11:2–6, we see a touching example of Jesus’s kindness to a surprising doubter: John the Baptist. God had revealed Jesus’s identity to John in utero (Luke 1:41) and by special revelation (John 1:29–34). But confined in Herod’s prison, likely knowing he wasn’t getting out alive, and likely experiencing significant spiritual oppression, John was second-guessing whether he had been right about his calling as forerunner. So, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3).

Jesus’s response was merciful kindness, intended to fortify John’s faith in his last, brutal days. Jesus does not break a bruised reed (Matthew 12:20). He knows when to deal gently with the doubts that assault us in the darkness of suffering and isolation.

Peter

In Matthew 14:28–33, Jesus addresses a different kind of doubt with a different kind of mercy. Peter had just exercised significant faith in Jesus, getting out of the boat to walk on top of the stormy sea. But when he was partway to Jesus, Peter realized just how incredible this whole experience was — people don’t walk on water!

As he lost faith in Jesus’s power, Jesus let him sink. This prompted Peter to scream, “Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30). Which Jesus did, along with giving this rebuke: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). Jesus’s response was merciful disappointment, intended to imprint upon Peter (and the other disciples) the danger of transferring his trust (manifested in his fear) from the power of the Word to the power of the world. He knows when to deal firmly with the doubts that assault us in the storms of life that demand focused, persevering faith.

Thomas

John 20:24–29, of course, is the most famous instance of Jesus dealing with a disciple’s doubt. When Thomas heard that the other ten disciples had seen the risen Jesus, while he hadn’t, he declared, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe” (John 20:25). We can only speculate what was going on inside of Thomas, but this is a different kind of doubt than either John the Baptist’s or Peter’s. This is skeptical doubt about the central claims of Christianity. It’s doubt in Jesus’s own predictions and in the eyewitness accounts of people Thomas knew.

Jesus’s response was merciful delay — he let Thomas sit in his unbelief for eight miserable, lonely, probably scary days. And then, when the time was right, Jesus appeared to him, saying, “Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27). He knows when to deal silently, and for how long, with doubts that assault us when, for whatever reason, we elevate our wisdom above God’s (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Wired to Doubt

I’m not addressing the issue of doubt as a dispassionate observer, but as one who is well-acquainted with doubt in its wide spectrum, including the kinds illustrated in the three examples above. And I believe I’ve received Jesus’s merciful encouragement, his merciful rebuke, and his merciful silence in response to my various doubts.

To some extent, I’m wired to doubt. This is partly because, like you, I’m a human being possessing a reasonable, yet fallible, capacity for rational, logical analysis, living in a world full of competing truth claims, uncertainty, error, and deception, and therefore nearly constantly needing to discern what’s true and what’s not. This is not easy.

But it’s also partly because I have by constitution — and, I’m sure, conditioning — a kind of sensitive conscience that is fairly easily given to uncertainty that my perspective is accurate and that I’m doing the right thing. I’ve been this way as long as I remember. So, I’m familiar with riding waves that are “driven and tossed by the wind,” which James warns us about (James 1:6). His warning, like those of other apostles, is well-placed, and I’m grateful for its gravity.

But I am also grateful that James’s brother Jude included his kind, pastoral word to doubters and those who pastor them: “Have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 22). And I’m grateful for the varied forms of mercy Jesus showed to doubters.

Our Mercy

The fight of faith is hard. Doubt, in whatever form, is part of the hard fight. Doubt is dangerous to faith and, to some degree, a necessary experience of believers in an age where “the faith . . . once for all delivered to the saints” is under constant assault (Jude 3), where well-aimed “flaming darts” are frequently being shot at them (Ephesians 6:16), and where believers on their best days see only “in a mirror dimly,” and know only “in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12). On their worst days, this mirror can seem very dim indeed.

So, let us be merciful on those who doubt. Let us not crush them or condemn them. Let us learn from Jesus that this mercy takes different forms for different doubts — none of which is crushing or condemning. And let us tread carefully here, “praying in the Holy Spirit” that we may “keep [ourselves and others] in the love of God” (Jude 20–21).

All Men Seek Happiness

God means for you to seek the highest happiness there is to experience. The Bible teaches this, and many of the great saints of church history have taught it explicitly. But many twenty-first-century English-speakers stumble over such an idea.

One of the reasons is simply a phenomena of language: it evolves. New words are continually introduced, and old words, once commonly used, drop out altogether. And some words, still in use after hundreds of years, now mean something different than they once did — like the English word “happiness.”

Actually, “happiness” can still cover a broad range of human experience. But for many contemporary English-speakers — particularly Christians, in my experience — the definition has narrowed. They consider “happiness” a transient, even trivial kind of pleasure, usually derived from circumstances. They reserve the term “joy” for deeper, more substantial and durable pleasures. They would affirm the Peanuts philosophers who stated,

Happiness is finding a pencil, pizza with sausage, telling the time.

Happiness is learning to whistle, tying your shoe for the very first time!

Happiness is two kinds of ice cream, knowing a secret, climbing a tree.

Happiness is five different crayons, catching a firefly, setting him free!

But they would say joy comes from more profound things, like God’s salvation (Psalm 51:12). This differentiation would have confused our English-speaking forebears from a couple centuries ago.

Happiness Is Not Trivial

I’ll give you an example all Americans will recognize. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson asserted that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” For Jefferson, “happiness” was something more profound than the pursuit of the pleasures of pizza with sausage. He was dreaming of a nation where people would be free to devote their lives to pursuing what they believed would bring them the deepest, widest, most durable pleasures possible here on earth.

A few decades before this Declaration, a young Jonathan Edwards had far deeper and far more durable experiences of pleasure in mind than Jefferson when he wrote,

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.

By “the other world,” Edwards was referring to heaven and then the new creation. This clearly was no trivial pursuit of transient, circumstantially-based experiences.

Our recent narrowing of the meaning of “happiness” both devalues the word and causes unnecessary confusion. We should stop it, Christians especially, because the Bible doesn’t define happiness so narrowly, as Isaiah illustrates:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7)

The Bible, in fact, “is indiscriminate in its pleasure language” using words like happiness, joy, contentment, delight, and satisfaction essentially as synonyms describing the same kinds of experiences.

Happiness is not trivial. Human beings take it very seriously. And we can’t help it.

It’s Serious Business

A Frenchman, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), actually captured this in one of the most poignant paragraphs in history:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves. (Pensées, Loc. 2049)

As soon as we read this, we all recognize this is true of us. When given a choice, all of us pursue a course we believe will result in the most desirable sense of well-being — what the word “happiness” really means. We orient our lives — even end them — according to this pursuit. Our longing for happiness is hardwired into us. By God.

God created human beings for happiness. That’s what God provided and promised Adam and Eve. The only thing he originally forbade them was a choice that would destroy their happiness (Genesis 2:16). Even the deception that enticed them to choose what God forbade was a false promise of greater happiness (Genesis 3:4–6).

Seeking happiness is not sinful. Sin is seeking happiness apart from or in defiance of God.

Seek God, Not Happiness?

But doesn’t this make an idol out of happiness? By elevating and encouraging the pursuit of happiness, are we making it a competitor with God?

While a particular pursuit of happiness might indeed be idolatrous, to contrast the experience of happiness itself with God is a confusion of categories. John Piper brings helpful clarity:

When I say I desire happiness, I mean, “I want to be happy.” But when I say, I desire a biscuit, I do not mean, “I want to be a biscuit.” Happiness is not an object to be desired. It is the experience of the object.

So it may not be idolatry to say, I want happiness more than I want any other experience. God is not in the category of “experience,” and so you are not ranking him. You are (know it or not) preparing to find him.

Idolatry is not wanting happiness supremely. Idolatry is finding supreme happiness in anything other than God.

This is why C.S. Lewis said, “It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can” (A Severe Mercy, 189). He, like all the great saints of Scripture and history, knew the “unblushing promises of reward” — of the happiness God holds out to us throughout the Bible. And that these are not invitations to idolatry, but to true worship. For our greatest pleasure is always the measure of our greatest treasure.

Fill the Infinite Abyss

Everyone everywhere seeks this profound happiness. But sooner or later, we all come to the realization that the happiness we most want isn’t found in anything on earth. We have an inconsolable longing deep in our souls. We hear this longing in the Preacher’s ancient lament of “Vanity!” (Ecclesiastes 1:1–11) and in David Foster Wallace’s modern lament, “We’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for” (Infinite Jest, 1053, note 281).

But the inconsolable nature of this longing is a clue, as Pascal says,

What is it then that this desire and this inability [to realize the good we long for] proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God himself. (Pensées, Loc. 2049)

The whole of Scripture bears witness to this: that only in God is “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11); that besides him, apart from him, there is nothing worth desiring, nothing that will bring satisfaction, on earth (Psalm 73:25); that only in God will our restless, happiness-seeking souls find rest (Psalm 62:5–7; Matthew 11:28–30). Only the infinite God can fill our infinite abyss.

‘It Doesn’t Make Sense’: When We’re Blindsided by Suicide

“It really doesn’t make sense and feels like it can’t be true.” Another suicide.

The friend that texted me had a good friend, a Christian whose faith by all appearances was authentic and vibrant, who succumbed to an incomprehensible darkness and incommunicable despair — a despair that, at least at the moment of final decision, he didn’t believe he could live with. My friend was reeling, blindsided by a tragedy that defies explanation.

We call it “the problem of evil,” trying to reconcile how evil and suffering exists in a world ruled by an almighty, all-good, all-knowing God. But calling it a “problem” hardly begins to describe our experiences of it in this fallen world.

Hand Back the Fruit

A buoyant friend suddenly ends his life. A beloved child dies of disease. We witness torture. The spouse we trusted with everything abandons us. The plane-ruined towers collapse upon three thousand souls. The horrific abuse we suffered leaves us soiled with shame for decades. Such tragedies and sins almost never make sense to us. And the closer we are to the destruction evil wreaks, the more chaotic and senseless it appears.

In these experiences, we glimpse the real nature of evil — and it’s worse than we had conceived. The evil events themselves, and God’s good providence in choosing not to prevent them (especially when we know he has chosen to deliver others), exceed the bounds of our rational capacities. We’re left with anguished, perplexing questions only God can answer. Most of the time he doesn’t, not specifically. He rarely reveals his specific purposes for allowing our specific tragedies and the resulting wreckage.

What we find is that we simply aren’t suited to bear the weight of the full knowledge of good and evil. It’s knowledge too complex for us to manage. It’s beyond us on both sides. And the merciful truth is that God does not ask us to bear it. He asks us to trust him with it. He asks us to hand him back the fruit.

Merciful Mystery

There are mysteries that are great mercies. Great, great mercies.

The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil contained a secret — one that God said should remain a mystery. God warned the man and woman that it would be better for them not to eat it. It would be the death of them if they did. Rather, he wanted them to trust him with the mystery of this knowledge and his administration of it (Genesis 2:17).

However, Satan told them this fruit would not kill them, but would open their eyes to the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of God’s knowledge, making them wise like God (Genesis 3:4–5). They believed him, and so they ate. Then the eyes of both were indeed opened to good and evil in ways they had not yet known — ways they were not at all equipped to deal with. And we have been languishing under this knowledge ever since.

Beyond Our Understanding

As a result of that first sin, God subjected the world to futility (Romans 8:20), and the evil one was granted a kind of governing power (1 John 5:19). Sin infected us profoundly. Not only were our eyes opened to more knowledge than we have the capacity to comprehend, but we also became very susceptible to evil deception.

Our indwelling sin nature also has adversely affected our ability to comprehend and appreciate good. That’s one reason we need “strength to comprehend . . . the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18–19). It’s why we must pursue through intentional prayer “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” when we’re anxious (Philippians 4:7). It’s why we need “the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation” to enlighten “the eyes of [our] hearts . . . that [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called [us]” (Ephesians 1:17–18). The goodness of God would be far beyond our imagination even if we were sinless, but it is all the more so in our fallenness (1 Corinthians 2:9).

We forfeited a great mercy when we believed we could be wise like God and opened the Pandora’s box of the mystery of the knowledge of good and evil.

Mysteries in Job’s Suffering

Mystery refers to what exists in the dimensions of reality beyond the edges of our perception (things we can’t see) or comprehension (things we can’t grasp). Some things are mysteries because we are unaware of them until God chooses to reveal them to us. Other mysteries we might be aware of, but they just exceed our ability to comprehend them, at least in this age.

The book of Job is the great piece of ancient literature that God inspired to illustrate how we experience these mysteries and how the restoring of our souls begins as we hand God back the fruit. The purposes behind Job’s tragedies were mysterious to him and his friends because of what they could not see and could not know.

Job’s friends thought they had sufficient grasp on the knowledge of good and evil to diagnose Job’s suffering. They were wrong (Job 42:7). And in the end, God did not explain himself to Job, but challenged Job’s assumption that he could comprehend the wisdom of God. Job responded by putting his hand over his mouth and saying, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. . . . Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3, 6), effectively handing the fruit back to God.

The message of the book of Job is not that God hates when people pour out their bewilderment in their pain and tragedies. Indeed, God the Son, when he became flesh and dwelt among us, cried out in the depth of his agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Rather, God’s message — which is a core message of the whole Bible — is “trust me.” Where God does not grant us to see or to know, he has merciful reasons for it.

When you think about it, God has designed the gospel and the Christian life to require us to hand back, and keep handing back, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — to render back to God what is God’s, what was never meant to be man’s.

Trust Him in the Darkness

When the realities of good and evil exceed our limited perceptions, overwhelm our limited comprehension, and threaten to override our psychological and emotional circuitry, there is a reason for this. We may be “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), but we are also fearfully finite. There are many things too wonderful for us to know. The peace that surpasses our understanding (Philippians 4:7), which we need so much, is available to us if we are willing to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).

When I texted my friend back, as he was grieving the tragic suicide of his friend, I sought to capture the essence of these truths in a few sentences. He asked me to write more on it, and I’ve attempted it here. In the face of devastating tragedy, we find that we simply aren’t suited to bear the full weight of the knowledge of good and evil. The merciful truth is that God does not ask us to bear it. He asks us to trust him with it. He asks us to hand him back the fruit.

What Makes Any Story Great? The Secret Hidden in Our Hearts

“I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?” So wondered Samwise Gamgee to his dear friend and master, Frodo Baggins, in Tolkien’s beloved epic, The Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers, 362). And what a tale it is. It is beloved by so many because it has all the elements we love so much in a great story.

Now, in some sense, it’s true that what makes for a great story has as many descriptions as there are people. That’s one of the almost incomprehensibly glorious things about humanity: billions and billions of unique facets of expression and preference. But many of the greatest stories have similar elements in common, even as they span different cultures and generations. And there’s a reason for this.

What Makes a Story Great?

At the core of nearly all the great stories is a desperate struggle between good and evil. This struggle provides the context and foundation for understanding everything else in the story. It defines who are the heroes and heroines and who are villains.

And though these stories can vary significantly in time and plot, there is a remarkable consistency among them when it comes to the nature of good and the nature of evil. Heroes, while typically flawed, are admirable and courageous, and pursue the good of others — often at great cost to themselves. Villains are despicable and view others as a means to their self-exalting, others-dominating ends.

And there are common, transcendent moral themes present, in greater or lesser degrees, in these stories that resonate deeply inside us: truth, righteousness, justice, mercy, grace, faith, integrity, and always various expressions of love. Romantic love (eros), yes, especially in the stories of the past few centuries. But there’s also deep love of friends (philio) and often familial love (storge). “But the greatest of these” expressions of love in the greatest stories is when someone puts the good of others before themselves (agape) (1 Corinthians 13:13). We are especially moved and inspired by sacrificial love, when “someone [lays] down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

A Tale as Old as Time

And these stories frequently follow a similar narrative arc. Think of recent epic stories, besides The Lord of the Rings, that have captured the imaginations of collective billions around the world: The Avengers, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Chronicles of Narnia. What’s the essential story?

An evil force, seeking to subject people under its domination, gains power and resources, and look invincible, while good finds itself in a weak position, outmanned, outgunned, and nearly out of time. And just when evil is about to deliver the final blow, and achieve its desire, against all apparent odds, the good finds an unexpected way through unexpected events to overcome and overthrow the powerful evil threat and deliver those who were imperiled.

This is a story told over and over and over again. And it has been told for ages. This narrative arc is in the biblical story of Esther, which is some 2,500 years old.

How to Gut Good Stories

But there’s one additional element I haven’t mentioned yet. And this element is ever-present, an indispensable component that holds the whole weave of these stories together: providence.

Toward the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf was explaining to the troubled hobbit, Frodo, why first his uncle Bilbo and now he suddenly found themselves in possession of the Ring of Power. Dark forces surrounded them as Sauron, the Ring’s maker, desperately tried to obtain it. But Gandalf reminded:

There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. . . . Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire! Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought. (The Fellowship of the Ring)

What we really love about these great stories is that the seemingly improbable turn of events and the apparently unlikely deliverances occur because, whether or not it’s explicitly mentioned, there’s a providence at work aiding the good and guiding the outcome. However it’s represented, providence is the iridescent moral backlight to the scenes in these stories that provides the good its beauty and makes its triumph meaningful.

In Western culture, the dominant narrative about human origins and destinations is Darwinian: that we and all that occurs in our experience are products of mindless, meaningless, moral-less forces. But deep down we know better. Our most beloved stories betray us. Remove providence and replace it with random chance, unguided coincidence, and all the beauty we love, all the meaning we need, is gutted out of the stories. Remove providence, and a story ceases to be a story.

Something deep inside us knows that good is supposed to ultimately defeat evil. We know this in our heart of hearts.

Echoes of the Real Story

Why do we know this? Why do we love these kinds of stories so much? I believe it’s because in them we hear echoes of the Great Story, the story of God’s redemption of fallen humanity. The narrative arc that our hearts recognize as glorious is the narrative arc of the Bible.

The Bible tells an epic story, but not in the way most of our epics are told. It is wholly unique — an odd, counterintuitive mixture of genres and authors and perspectives. We come away from it with sufficient understanding of the story’s origin and goal, but not anything we’d consider comprehensive. And the story is incomplete. It’s incomplete because the story is still being told — right now. It’s the Real Story being told in real time; the story we’re all a part of.

And the reason we love a story like The Lord of the Rings so much is because it taps into the deep places of our heart, where we long for real hope — the real “blessed hope” of the real return of the real King (Titus 2:13) and the final real overthrow of the dreadful evil in real life whose dark shadow we really live and languish under (1 John 3:8; 5:19).

What Chapter Are You In?

Perhaps, where we find ourselves right now in the Real Story, we feel like Frodo did in that conversation with Samwise Gamgee about the tale they found themselves in:

“You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: ‘Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.’” (The Two Towers, 363)

Some are experiencing this in more excruciating ways than others, though, in truth, we are all living here, on the outskirts of Mordor. The great fictional epics have horrible parts to them because the Real Epic has horrible parts to it, sometimes unspeakably so.

But Sauron’s days are numbered, the White Witch’s wintry spell is melting, light is breaking into the Dark Side, Voldemort’s control is weakening, Thanos’s snap is being undone, and Haman will swing from his own gallows. Jesus has come “to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

No matter what we face, there is real hope because The Story is real: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). Therefore, “may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13).

The Devil Will Hang on His Own Gallows

“The weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). That one sentence from the apostle Paul, with poetic simplicity, captures why redemptive history has played out in the strange, unlikely ways that it has.

Woven through Scripture and church history is a consistent and counterintuitive pattern: God cedes the positions of greatest worldly power and influence and wealth to his enemies — those who “take their stand. . . against the Lord and against his Anointed” (Psalm 2:2 NASB) — and then, through the most improbable, unexpected means, overthrows his enemies and redeems his people. He lets Haman build the gallows, and then hangs him on it.

You remember Haman. He’s the villain in the biblical account of Esther, the made-for-film historical drama that played out mainly in the Persian capital of Susa — today, the Iranian city of Shush — in the fifth century B.C. This story is an archetype of the biblical pattern, the grand story in miniature.

Evil Ascends to Power

The crisis at the center of the story is that the Jews living in the Medo-Persian empire under the rule of King Ahasuerus (or Xerxes I) find themselves on the brink of annihilation because of the malevolence of one man: Haman.

Haman was one of the king’s court officials. And at some point, “King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him” (Esther 3:1). In those days, Haman’s position was called Grand Vizier. He was second-in-command and the king’s most trusted advisor.

Haman loved his powerful, lucrative, and exalted position. By the direct command of the king, one of the enjoyable benefits was that whenever he would enter or exit the palace gate the king’s subjects had to bow low before him, conceding Haman’s superiority (Esther 3:2). But one man denied him that benefit, which incited in him a deadly rage (Esther 3:5).

Weak People in Unlikely Places

Mordecai was a Jew living in Susa thanks to Nebuchadnezzar’s deportation program a generation earlier (Esther 2:5–6). He held no position of power or social influence. All we know is that prior to the core events of the story, Mordecai was “bringing up” his first cousin, Hadassah (whose Persian name was Esther), as his own daughter, because she had been orphaned (Esther 2:7), which meant the girl was probably still in her teens when the unexpected happened to her.

As a part of Mordecai’s household, Esther too lived in obscurity. She happened to be exceptionally beautiful (Esther 2:7), but it wouldn’t have entered anyone’s mind that her beauty would result in powerful political influence with the king. And then something unusual occurred: the former queen refused to obey a command of the king and was therefore royally divorced (Esther 1). As a result, a kingdom-wide who will be the next queen beauty contest was staged. And Esther, with no powerful connections, from no noble family (1 Corinthians 1:26), won.

In fact, nobody in the court seems to care at all about her family connections. Mordecai appears to have no privileged court access. So being a loving, conscientious, concerned adoptive father, he regularly stationed himself near the palace gate so he could keep tabs on Esther’s well-being as best he could (Esther 2:11, 21; 3:3). And this resulted in unexpected, providential consequences, one wonderful and one terrible and then wonderful.

The wonderful consequence was that one day Mordecai discovered an assassination plot against the king, exposed it, and saved the king’s life (Esther 2:19–22). But the king apparently forgot about it quickly — though the deed was recorded in “the [king’s] book of memorable deeds” (Esther 6:1). Despite his faithfulness, Mordecai remained just another obscure servant milling about the palace gate. The gates where Haman regularly went in and out.

Evil Makes Its Move

So we know Haman enjoyed when everyone bowed before the most excellent Vizier as he arrived and exited. The problem was, not everyone bowed. Mordecai, due to his Jewish religious convictions, refused to honor Haman in a way he believed only God should be honored. Haman was informed and took homicidal offense over this (Esther 3:2–4).

Then comes a strange twist in the story: once Haman discovered Mordecai was a Jew, his anger turned genocidal — he decided every Jew in the kingdom should die (Esther 3:5–6). Why this overreaction? The anonymous author of the book of Esther gives us a clue, but more on that in a moment.

Patient in his lethal resentment, Haman waited for an opportune time, then carefully sought to persuade the king to codify his Jewish extermination plot in a royal, irrevocable, well-funded decree. The king was persuaded and put his ring to the wax (Esther 3:8–13).

Now the stage was set. Haman had secured all the political power, legislative coercion, sociocultural influence, and financial resources to carry out this mass slaughter. Only an act of God could save God’s imperiled people.

Glimpse Behind the Story

Now, back to the question: why kill every Jewish person? Well, perhaps Haman’s personal ego was just that big. But the author drops a hint for those who know their Bibles that something bigger was playing out — a providential backstory.

We’re told that Haman was an “Agagite” (Esther 3:1). Agag was the Amalekite king whose army was annihilated by the Israelite army under King Saul and who was himself executed by the prophet Samuel (1 Kings 15). In other words, Haman was of Amalekite descent.

This might explain Haman’s deep-seated hatred of the Jews: desire for ethnic revenge. But I think the inclusion of this genealogical detail had less to do with informing readers about Haman’s problem with the Jews, and more to do with reminding readers about God’s problem with Amalek:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:14–16)

God also has a book of memorable deeds. Haman’s “Agagite” lineage reminds us there is a bigger struggle between good and evil playing out than the one occurring in Susa. Esther is a story within a far bigger story. Keep your eyes open when you read the Bible. God is in the details (even when he’s not mentioned).

Most Unlikely Deliverance

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly for Haman. He appeared (and felt) secure in his position of power, honor, and wealth. The day of death for the Jews was on the schedule. And to give himself a special reward, he had an extravagant, seventy-five-foot gallows built so he could fully savor Mordecai’s demise (Esther 5:14).

And then events turned on the providential hinge: unexpectedly, suddenly, in a single day it all went south.

It started with a royal bout of insomnia. Unable to sleep, the king decided to review the “book of memorable deeds.” And he just happened to realize he’d forgotten Mordecai’s memorable deed of saving his life — the man had never been rewarded (Esther 6:1–4). This oversight needed rectifying immediately! And Haman just happened to come early to the palace and offered great counsel about how men in whom the king delights should be honored — which resulted in the Grand Vizier publicly and lavishly honoring Mordecai in the city — a bad omen, as Haman’s own wife pointed out (Esther 6:13).

Then that evening the big bomb dropped. The queen turned out to be one of the Jews Haman had condemned to death. Immediately Haman transformed from the king’s most trusted official into his most treasonous enemy (Esther 7:1–8). And when it appeared things couldn’t possibly get worse, the queen turned out to be Mordecai’s adopted daughter!

The story ends with the murderous Amalekite swinging on the gallows he had built for the faithful Jew, and the Jews of the kingdom suddenly awash in publicly recognized royal favor and empowered to fully defend themselves, turning their doomsday into a V-day. And to add to the happy ending, Mordecai assumed the late and disgraced Haman’s position of the king’s Grand Vizier.

The Devil Is Going to Hang

This story of redemption, the kind of story we love so much, the kind of story that resonates with something deep, deep inside us, is a type, a shadow of the Grand Story of redemption. A story in which “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).

God ceded all the positions of worldly power, influence, and resources to the devil (1 John 5:19). Then when he came into the world to redeem his people, hardly anyone, even from his own ethnic people, recognized him (John 1:10–11). He came from a despised town no one expected (John 1:46), chose disciples no one expected, and accomplished his most important work through means no one expected. God on the cross and God in a tomb? Never had God’s position looked so weak; never the enemies’ so strong. And never had an enemy so terribly miscalculated.

At any given time, things can look very discouraging. Our vantage point is always very limited. Depending on when and where we’re living, it can appear as if satanic evil is going to defeat God’s good. But don’t lose heart. Don’t forget the storyline. There’s a bigger story playing out than just the one we’re watching.

Yes, pray and fast and act with the called-for courage, even if perishing is a very real possibility (Esther 4:16). A time is coming when events are going to turn on a providential hinge, and God will send deliverance for his people, most likely from a wholly unexpected place. And the devil is going to hang on his own gallows.