Jon Bloom's Blog, page 2

A Time to Say Goodbye: A Father’s Gratitude as Children Leave Home

Remember how it felt as a kid at the end of the school year, when the long summer holidays stretched out before you? You knew it wouldn’t last forever, but fall seemed a world away.

That’s kind of what it felt like for me and my wife, Pam, during our early childrearing years (though it wasn’t a holiday). We knew this golden “summer” season of life would someday end. But for quite a wonderful while, it seemed like the “fall” of our kids’ departures into adulthood was a world away.

However, just as we learned as kids, summers aren’t as long as they first appear. Our parenting “fall” has arrived, and with it all the necessary changes. This is God’s design: “For everything there is a season” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And as God pronounced, this design is good (Genesis 1:14, 18). I don’t begrudge it.

But I do grieve it, which I also believe is good. Because when God made “a time for every matter under heaven,” he included “a time to mourn” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4). The time to mourn is when someone or something precious to us passes away. And the precious season Pam and I were given to live together with all our children is passing away. It’s not easy to say goodbye.

But something happened this year that provided our whole family a chance to say goodbye to that season together: we sold the family home.

Leaving More Than a Home

In June 2001, Pam and I bought a modest house on a small inner-city plot in South Minneapolis and moved in with our two young children (ages 5 and 2). Three more children came along over the next few years. So, for the better part of two decades, this house was the busy hub of our family of seven. It was a gracious provision from God and served us well.

As our kids began to reach adulthood, however, and as some began to leave the nest, Pam and I discerned the Lord readying us for another move. We weren’t sure when this would happen, so we kept it in prayer, kept it on our kids’ radars, and kept our eyes open.

Then, last January, the moment surprisingly (and suddenly) arrived. The right home for the next season of life at the right price became available. Both of us discerned the Lord was in it, so we pulled the trigger. This immediately threw us into high gear in order to get our house ready to sell and ourselves ready to move.

But getting our house ready to sell proved more difficult than I anticipated. I don’t mean the repairs, upgrades, and cleaning. I mean getting ready to leave the place. Because leaving this place really brought home the realization that we were leaving more than a home; we were leaving a wonderful era.

The Rooms Where It Happened

In the hustle and bustle of those busy years, I didn’t fully realize just how much that house was being woven into the fabric of our shared lives, but for 21 years it was where most of our most profound family moments occurred.

It’s where children were conceived and where they first came awake to the world. It’s where some first crawled, then walked, then ran; where some first spoke, then read, then wrote. It was where we spoke most about God and spoke most to God together. It’s where we spent the most time reading God’s word and singing to and about God together. It’s where we expressed our deepest longings for God — and our doubts about him — together. It’s where we shared our greatest joys and sorrows together, where we had the most fun and most fights together. It’s where we shared thousands of meals and washed hundreds of thousands of dishes together. It’s where our children grew up together, and where Pam and I grew noticeably older together.

This house framed our family life for most of our family’s life. These were the rooms where it all happened. So, I guess it’s fitting that as we packed up these rooms, the reality of all we were leaving behind really hit home.

Goodbye to Golden Days

For me, the emptier each room became, the more it seemed to fill with memories. I’d enter our bedroom and think how everyone used to crowd on our bed for evening book time. Walking through the living room might recall a bunch of Blooms enjoying Sunday sundaes. A glance at a basement wall could prompt, “You wrote her lullaby here, remember?” Sometimes I could almost hear my kids bounding down the stairs, giggling over something silly, arguing with their mother, tattling on a sibling, happily singing, letting the storm door slam while running out of the house, or calling for me from their bedrooms to come give them their nighttime blessing.

The last few days at the house, when it was mostly empty, it was as if ghosts of the past were released from some grey-matter basement in my memory to finally run free. Ghosts of past Christmases, Easters, birthdays, evening dinners, family devotions, chore times, movie nights, and Saturday special breakfasts would show up unbidden (and suddenly I’d be searching for Kleenex).

Well, perhaps not entirely unbidden. Consciously or not, I was looking and listening for them. And so was everyone else. Every family member was recalling them. We reminisced a lot together and did a lot of laughing and crying — often simultaneously. It was a sweet way (with the right amount of bitter) to say goodbye to our beloved house. But we all knew it was more than that. It was a cathartic way to say goodbye to a golden time of shared life, a wonderful “summer” season that was ending.

On the last night, we all gathered at the house, joined by our dear next-door friends, who had been so much a part of our lives for more than a decade, and together we went room by room, sharing recollections. Then, when only our family remained, standing in the entry, we thanked God for that house, for those beloved rooms where it had all happened, and for all the happenings that had made that season of life so precious to us.

Three Parting Thank-Yous

I loved being a father. I’m not done being one, of course. I just mean that I loved raising my children. I loved providing for them, protecting them, playing with them, comforting them, and teaching them. Those formative years were wonderful. I will miss them.

But the next season is upon us. Three of our children have departed the home, and the two who remain (our twins) are high school seniors. Pam and I are already experiencing some of the new season’s wonderful gifts (like grandchildren — we now have three!). So, as a kind of benediction to mark the passing of a season I’ve loved, I want to offer a few simple words of thanks. For some things are so profound, we can only say them simply.

Thank you, heavenly Father, for the priceless gifts of our children’s lives, and for the inexpressible gift of allowing Pam and me to share with them their growing-up years. This remarkable quarter-century season came from you, and it was indeed good.

Thank you, Pam, for being, in my estimation, the primary human reason this season was so wonderful. From the moment you became aware of each child’s existence, you haven’t ceased to lovingly, faithfully, and sacrificially care for them. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in parenting. Your steady faith in God, your patience and grace toward the rest of us, and your gentle, quiet spirit daily seasoned our home and made it a place of peace.

And to Levi, Eliana, Peter, Moriah, and Micah: thank you for the privilege of being your father. I realize you weren’t given a choice, but somehow it still feels to me like a gift from you because of how profoundly your lives have enriched mine. The years I was able to spend with you and your wonderful mother have been the best of my life. It was a golden time. I would do it all over again. But “for everything there is a season,” and God has faithfully brought us to the dusk of this one and the dawn of the next. And so, it only seems right to speak over you once more the blessing you each received from me nearly every night of your childhood:

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26)

Disorient, Distort, Deceive: Satan’s Core Strategy Against Us

When it comes to resisting temptations to sin, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. Temptations arrive in many ways at many times, and the Bible gives many different strategies to defeat them.

But we can notice one fundamental similarity in all the temptations we face, a dimension that’s always present in satanic deception. Remembering this similarity will help us in the fight, whatever resistance strategy we implement.

To help us see this unifying theme in temptation, let’s examine history’s most remarkable example — the devil’s temptation of Jesus. This scene illustrates Satan’s core strategy, how Jesus kept his head clear, and how we can imitate Jesus’s example.

Anatomy of Temptation

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record Jesus being tempted by the devil at the beginning of his ministry, but Matthew’s account provides the most details. He describes three specific temptations and Jesus’s response to each (Matthew 4:1–11).

Theologians down through history have pointed out that there’s a lot going in this particular temptation from historical and theological standpoints, but I’m not going to address those topics here. Instead, my goal is simply to identify a specific dimension common in all of Satan’s temptations.

Dialogue with the Devil

To begin, after Jesus fasts for forty days, the devil seeks to take advantage of his physical weakness and severe hunger.

Devil: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” (verse 3)

Jesus: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (verse 4, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3)

Then, from the pinnacle of the temple, the devil seeks to take advantage of Jesus’s faith in a scriptural promise.

Devil: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” (verse 6, quoting Psalm 91:11–12)

Jesus: “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (verse 7, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16)

Finally, after showing Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory” (verse 8), the devil seeks to take advantage of Jesus’s promised exaltation.

Devil: “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (verse 9)

Jesus: “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” (verse 10, quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16)

Three Essential Elements

Notice that the three temptations have three elements in common.

First, the devil sought to narrow Jesus’s focus specifically on each tempting proposition, so that Jesus would view each in a distorted context and therefore experience them as disproportionately compelling. More on this in a moment.

Second, each temptation promises both explicit and implicit rewards. I will paraphrase some that I discern, as if spoken by the tempter:

Bread: Jesus, if you miraculously create bread, it will relieve your starving agony and, more importantly, validate your claim to divinity. Jump: If you demonstrate the truth of this audacious promise in the sight of all those witnesses down there, you will glorify both the trustworthiness of God’s word and the trustworthiness of your claim as God’s Son. Worship: Since it is in my power, if you will bow to me, I will make sure that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess your lordship.

Third, each tempting proposition makes implicit threats. Again, I’ll paraphrase some that I discern:

Bread: If you’re unwilling to miraculously create bread, doesn’t it indicate your inability to do so? You’re no Moses, much less the Prophet, much less the Son of God. You’re just another self-deluded “messiah” — and you know what happens to frauds.
Jump: If you’re unwilling to demonstrate the truth of these promises, doesn’t it indicate that you don’t really believe them? You’re no Son of God. You’re just like every other hypocritical rabbi: teach, teach, teach, but you won’t risk your life to prove God’s word is true — and you know what happens to hypocrites. Worship: The road you’re on is more than risky; it’s doomed. If you don’t bow to me, you will die. And I will make sure it is unspeakably horrible. Satan’s Core Strategy

This dissection of Jesus’s temptation experience helps us examine not only the devil’s specific strategy with Jesus, but the core strategy he employs in every temptation.

What was the devil trying to do? Essentially, he was seeking to do with Jesus what he did with Adam and Eve and what he does with each of us: disorient Jesus’s perception of reality, so he could distort Jesus’s perception of reality and deceive Jesus into believing a false story about reality.

See if this doesn’t sound familiar. Satan comes when Jesus is in a weakened state — we humans are more easily disoriented when we’re physically, emotionally, psychologically weak. Think about how differently you’re prone to respond to various pressures when you’re weak, rather than when you’re strong and refreshed.

Then he poses to Jesus propositions that put a distorted twist on truth. The devil wove plenty of truth into his presentation of a false reality. Was it inherently sinful for Jesus to desire to satisfy his hunger? No. Was it inherently sinful for Jesus to demonstrate his sonship through miraculously making bread? No — he did this very thing later when he fed the five thousand (Matthew 14:13–21). Was it inherently sinful for Jesus to put his faith in a specific promise of Scripture? No. Was it inherently sinful for Jesus (in particular) to long to be highly exalted and for every knee to bow and tongue to confess his lordship? No (see Philippians 2:9–11).

All of these, given the right context, were good and righteous. What made the devil’s propositions evil was their distorted context. And I think it required more resolve from Jesus’s human nature to resist than we might at first assume.

Jesus Resists

But resist he did. How? One way to describe it is that he skillfully used the armor of God against the schemes of the devil (Ephesians 6:11). In Jesus’s responses, we see him lifting the “shield of faith” and wielding the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:16–17).

Another way to describe it is that Jesus was “not ignorant of [Satan’s] designs” and therefore refused to be “outwitted” by him (2 Corinthians 2:11). Jesus was not ignorant of the universal diabolical dimension of temptation: to disorient, distort, and deceive. So he had his antennae up; he was anticipating it. And when it came, he expected it to sound appealing and appear life-giving, when in reality “its end is the way the death” (Proverbs 14:12).

The devil tempted Jesus to see himself in a different story, one he implied would be better if Jesus took matters into his own hands. Jesus discerned the insidious temptations by remembering the Real Story he was in, which is what his Scripture quotes reveal. He had come to undo the curse of the fall — the catastrophic result of the first Adam believing a perverted story — by doing only what he saw his Father doing (John 5:19).

Remember the Story You’re In

That is the crucial application point I want to draw from Jesus’s temptation: remember the story you’re in. All of us tend to respond to tempting desires or fears based on the narrative of reality we believe (or want to believe) at the moment. What will lead to more joy or less misery, according to the story we’re believing? If we allow ourselves to be disoriented and sold a distorted bill of goods, and if we then take the bait of a deceptively appealing false story, we will be “lured and enticed by [our] own desire,” which when “conceived gives birth to sin, and sin . . . [eventually] brings forth death” (James 1:14–15).

Many different strategies for fighting different kinds of temptations exist. But all of them require that we not be outwitted by Satan due to ignorance of his designs to disorient, distort, and deceive. God calls us, like Jesus, to “be sober-minded [and] watchful,” since our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). So, like Jesus, we anticipate what temptation will be like, and when it arrives we resist the devil by first remembering the story we’re in.

Lead Me, O Lord: Ten Prayers for Christian Leaders

Pastor is a strange and difficult calling. It’s strange because, to use the biblical metaphor, a pastor is a sheep to whom the Great Shepherd has entrusted certain shepherding responsibilities within a particular “flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2) — he’s a shepherding sheep. And it’s difficult because, in addition to carrying out his demanding shepherding responsibilities, he himself needs to be led by the Great Shepherd as much any other Christian. Indeed, he is to set an example of following for his fellow sheep (1 Peter 5:3).

In other words, a pastor is a lead follower, which puts the emphasis of his calling in the right places. He’s first and foremost a follower of Jesus, the Great Shepherd, like any other sheep. Lead describes not his exalted status or unquestionable spiritual authority or superior value within the flock, but his sober calling to follow his Shepherd in such a way that his fellow sheep can “consider the outcome of [his] way of life, and imitate [his] faith,” to speak to them “the word of God,” and to keep watch over their souls, as one “who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:7, 17).

Call to Prayerful Dependence

If understood correctly, a pastor’s calling is designed to keep him in a posture of prayerful dependence, with his fellow flock members praying on his behalf. For who is adequate for such a calling — accountable to Jesus for how he models what it means to be a Christian, how rightly he handles the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), and how the souls under his care spiritually fare? A pastor’s calling should regularly send all the sheep to their knees, because how well a pastor leads hangs on how well he follows the Great Shepherd’s lead.

To that end, the following are ten suggested ways pastors can pray to be led by Jesus, drawn from various psalms. And they can be easily adapted by church members as ways to pray for those who love them enough to serve as lead followers.

1. Following: Lead me as my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
     He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
     He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
     for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:1–3)

Great Shepherd, the flock I am a part of is your flock, and I am only an “overseer,” a lead follower, by the appointment of your Spirit (Acts 20:28). Therefore, I am all the more dependent on you to shepherd me, since apart from you I can do nothing (John 15:5). Help me keep looking to you for everything I need (Philippians 4:19) and seeking to serve your flock in the strength you supply (1 Peter 4:11). Lead me in paths of righteousness for your name’s sake.

2. Wisdom: Lead me in your understanding.

Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
     and observe it with my whole heart.
Lead me in the path of your commandments,
     for I delight in it. (Psalm 119:34–35)

Great Shepherd, I believe that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” and that “all those who practice it have a good understanding” (Psalm 111:10). This is why I delight in your word: it is the source of understanding for how I and my fellow sheep may “walk in a manner . . . fully pleasing to” you (Colossians 1:10). So give me understanding that I may wisely observe your commandments with my whole heart, because I love you (John 14:15).

3. Teaching: Lead me by your Spirit.

Teach me to do your will,
     for you are my God!
Let your good Spirit lead me
     on level ground! (Psalm 143:10)

Great Shepherd, you’ve called me, as a lead follower, to teach my brothers and sisters (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:9). Help me remember that I have nothing to teach them that I have not received from you through others by your Spirit (1 Corinthians 4:7). And help me remember that I am responsible to teach not merely through what I say, but through what I do by the power of your Spirit (James 1:22). So lead me by your good Spirit, and teach me to do your will.

4. Purity: Lead me in your righteousness.

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
     Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
     and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24)

Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness. (Psalm 5:8)

Great Shepherd, apart from your sovereign keeping, I am as vulnerable to temptation and as prone to wander as any of my fellow sheep. And you know the state of my heart and my inmost thoughts more thoroughly than I do. Do whatever you must to reveal any grievous way in me so that my precious brothers and sisters “who hope in you” never have cause to “be put to shame through me” (Psalm 69:6). Help me lead by seeking to be a lead confessor, lead repenter, lead grace-recipient, and lead holiness-pursuer. Lead me in your righteousness — don’t let me try to lead with mine.

5. Guidance: Lead me in your truth.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
     teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
     for you are the God of my salvation;
     for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:4–5)

Great Shepherd, all your providential paths “are steadfast love and faithfulness” (Psalm 25:10). But as a lead follower, I often do not know the right path to take. I and this flock are utterly dependent upon you to lead us. Make me humble enough to remember that “in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14), patient enough not to move until you grant sufficient clarity, and bold enough to lead in following you when your guidance becomes sufficiently clear. Lead me and my fellow sheep in your truth and teach us.

6. Courage: Lead me because of my enemies.

Teach me your way, O Lord,
     and lead me on a level path
     because of my enemies. (Psalm 27:11)

Great Shepherd, you displayed such wise and gracious courage in the face of your spiritual and human adversaries. Train me in cultivating such courage. Teach me to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19), to courageously seek the glory of the one who sent me, and not my own (John 7:18). Teach me to truly love my enemies and seek their good (Luke 6:27) while remaining courageous enough to speak the truth in love when it is unpopular and despised (Ephesians 4:15). Lead me on a level path because of my enemies.

7. Discouragement: Lead me with your light.

Send out your light and your truth;
     let them lead me. (Psalm 43:3)

Great Shepherd, when I do succumb to discouragement because of the opposition of adversaries, criticism from my fellow sheep, sorrow from tragedies within my flock, difficulties within my family, my besetting weaknesses, or fatigue from long, strenuous labors, have mercy on me. Send out your light and your truth, and let them lead me to once again “take courage” (Psalm 27:14).

8. Protection: Lead me to your refuge.

You are my rock and my fortress;
     and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me. (Psalm 31:3)

Great Shepherd, you laid down your life for your sheep to deliver us from our greatest danger: your Father’s wrath (John 10:11; Romans 5:8–9). You told us we would experience tribulation in the world, but not to fear because you have overcome the world (John 16:33). And you promise to “rescue [us] from every evil deed and bring [us] safely into [your] heavenly kingdom” (2 Timothy 4:18). Protect me and my fellow sheep from the true danger of faithlessness. Protect me as a lead follower from discouraging others by fearing what man can do to me more than I fear the destruction of faithlessly shrinking back (Hebrews 10:39). You are my rock and fortress; when I am afraid, lead me to seek my only safe refuge in you.

9. Overwhelmed: Lead me when my heart is faint.

Hear my cry, O God,
     listen to my prayer;
from the end of the earth I call to you
     when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock
     that is higher than I. (Psalm 61:1–2)

Great Shepherd, I take comfort that such a faith-filled, strong, courageous lead follower as David at times felt overwhelmed by his circumstances and became faint of heart. And I take comfort that you know my frame and remember that I am dust (Psalm 103:14). When I become overwhelmed, “lift me high upon a rock” (Psalm 27:5), above the fray, where I can rest and regain perspective. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

10. Spiritual Desertion: Lead me through my darkness.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
     Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
     If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning.
     and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
     and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
     and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
     the night is bright as the day,
     for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:7–12)

Great Shepherd, when darkness has covered me, and I have lost sight of you; when I can’t discern your presence, and your voice seems like a distant echo; when a spiritual storm overtakes me, and I become disoriented and confused, remind me that saints through the ages have also endured such experiences. Remind me that even my darkness is not dark to you. And reveal yourself — not only to me, but also to my brothers and sisters — as the Shepherd who never loses a sheep (Luke 15:4), even in the valley of the shadow (Psalm 23:4). Even there, let your hand lead me until the storm passes and “light dawns in the darkness” (Psalm 112:4).

How Can God Forget My Sins? What We Remember at the Table

It’s beautiful and fitting that the first explicit mention of the new covenant in the New Testament comes from the mouth of Jesus. And he mentions it at the most fitting moment. After sharing his final Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus takes a chalice of wine and says to them, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).

There is a world of meaning packed into those words that would change the world.

Great Pivotal Moment

Reclining around the table that evening, the disciples were observing from front-row seats a pivotal moment of redemptive history. The great Passover “Lamb of God,” who had come to “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), was inaugurating a new-covenant Passover meal of remembrance to go along with his inauguration of the long-awaited new covenant foretold by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34). The author of Hebrews quotes it in full:

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
     when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
     and with the house of Judah,
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers
     on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
     and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
     after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
     and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
     and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
     and each one his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,”
for they shall all know me,
     from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
     and I will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:8–12)

It’s unclear how much the disciples grasped at the time. But when Jesus said the cup represented “the new covenant in [his] blood,” he meant he was far more than a Passover lamb whose blood would momentarily shield God’s covenant people from a momentary judgment.

He meant that he had “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). He meant that through his shed blood, he would completely achieve what centuries of the shed “blood of bulls and goats” could never achieve (Hebrews 10:4). He meant that his sacrificial death would make it possible for God to “be merciful toward [the] iniquities” of all his covenant people, for all time, and “remember their sins no more.”

Why the Old Covenant Became Obsolete

By all accounts, Christianity is now one of the world’s great religions, distinct from Judaism. But to Christianity’s Founder and the first generation or two of his followers, what we call “Christianity” was Judaism. It was Judaism with its great messianic hope fulfilled and without the old covenant’s caste of priests performing its required continual animal sacrifices. It was (and is) new-covenant Judaism.

The book of Hebrews provides the most in-depth explanation of why the old covenant had to be replaced by the new covenant. “If that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second” (Hebrews 8:7). So, what was faulty with the first? A full, careful study of the book of Hebrews is required to get the whole picture. But I’ll cover two major reasons.

Deficient Power to Defeat Sin

The first we see in Jeremiah’s prophecy: “They [the people of Israel] did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord” (Hebrews 8:9). That is, God “finds fault with them” (Hebrews 8:8), not the covenant itself. The history of Israel, from the time of the exodus from Egypt till the appearance of Christ, chronicles a continual breaking of the covenant that God had made with them at Sinai. This covenant inscripturated in the Law of Moses proved impossible for the people to keep because of their pervasive, inescapable problem: human sinfulness. As Paul explains,

The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. . . . [But] it was sin [rebelling against God’s holy law], producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. (Romans 7:12–13)

In other words, the first covenant had the power to expose sin, but not the power to free people from it. And this produced in even the most conscientious, rigorous observers of the law the cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).

Deficient Blood to Atone for Sin

A second reason the old covenant was not final and complete was because its sacrifices, continually offered every year, could never make perfect those who drew near. “Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered?” the author of Hebrews reasons. “But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:1–4).

The old covenant made it clear that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). But as the old-covenant law lacked the power to free humans from sin, the old-covenant shedding of animal blood lacked the power to fully atone for human sin. All that these sacrifices effectually did was remind sinners of their “wretched,” inescapable sinful state — and point them forward to a coming, final, effective, once-for-all sacrifice.

Promise of the New Covenant

What we see foreshadowed in Jeremiah’s prophecy is the gospel the Messiah would bring: God’s intention to address these two major problems “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10).

Under the new covenant, God promised his people that he would “put [his] laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10). This was a pointer to a superior law, “the law of the [Holy] Spirit of life” (Romans 8:1) who had the power set them free from their enslavement to their fallen sin nature, their “body of death.” It was a pointer to regeneration, where God’s covenant people would be “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of [the Messiah] from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). God’s people would receive a new nature inclined to keep God’s righteous law, now written on their new hearts and transforming their renewed minds (Romans 12:2).

And under the new covenant, God would “be merciful toward [his covenant people’s] iniquities, and [he would] remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). This was a pointer to a superior sacrifice whose shed blood had the power to atone for all their sins. It was a pointer to “a single offering [by which God would perfect] for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). And if God no longer remembers his covenant people’s sin, they are no longer in the “wretched” sinful state for which they need reminding.

Do This in Remembrance of Me

This is the world of meaning in those few words Jesus spoke to his disciples as he held the cup. But this time, I’ll quote from the apostle Paul applying Jesus’s words:

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:25–26)

The new-covenant Passover meal we call the “Lord’s Supper” is not, as some believe, a re-shedding of Jesus’s blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Nor is it primarily a reminder of our sinful state. It is a remembrance of the once-for-all new-covenant sacrifice Jesus made for us. When we partake of this little meal, we hear God the Father say, “Because my Son has shed his blood for the forgiveness of your sins, I will remember your sins no more.”

And more than that, we hear God the Father say, “I will be your God, and you shall be my beloved child. And you shall know me” (Hebrews 8:10–11). For that, after all, is the heart of the new covenant. “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

Give Me More of God: Why Spiritual Intimacy Can Feel Elusive

Deep in the heart of every true disciple of Jesus is a deep longing for more of God. But what is this more we desire? We might each describe our want somewhat differently, depending on how this longing refracts through our biology, history, and theological influences. To some degree, none of us has words for it. But at the core, what we desire is to really know God — to know him in the intimate ways that only love knows.

And we have this desire because, by God’s unfathomable grace toward us in Christ (Ephesians 2:8–9), he first has known and loved us (1 Corinthians 8:3; 1 John 4:19). It is his great desire, one he expresses in the promise of Jeremiah’s great prophecy (quoted in full in Hebrews 8):

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:33–34)

At the heart of the new covenant is God’s great desire that we “shall all know” him.

Known by Love

You don’t need to know Hebrew (or Greek) to discern the knowing God desires. It is the knowing of relational intimacy, of deep friendship — the kind of knowing that only love knows. For to truly know God is to love God.

The role of love in intimately knowing someone is profound. On one hand, we cannot intimately love someone we do not know. So, knowledge must precede love. But on the other hand, the deep love of intimate friendship is the door to even deeper knowledge of the beloved, because intimate friends entrust themselves and so disclose more of themselves to each other. So, there is an intimate knowledge accessible only through the deep love that results from and produces even more profound trust.

We see one illustration of this dynamic in play at the end of John 6, when, as a result of hearing Jesus say offensive-sounding things, “many of his [wider group of] disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66). But the twelve didn’t leave him. Why? Because, to use Peter’s words, that they had “come to know” that he was “the Holy One of God” (John 6:69).

For eleven of them, this knowledge wasn’t merely intellectual; they had come to love him and trust him, even when he confused them. And because they trusted him, Jesus disclosed to them “secrets of the kingdom” he didn’t disclose to others (Luke 8:10). To really know Jesus was to really love Jesus, which was the door to knowing Jesus more. This is what Jesus is getting at when he later says to them,

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. (John 14:21)

The Way Is Simple

Notice the simplicity in those words: Jesus will manifest himself to whoever loves him. And two sentences later, he says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). If we love Jesus, both the Father and the Son will manifest themselves to us through the “Spirit of truth” who “dwell[s] in” us (John 14:17).

These are precious and very great promises (2 Peter 1:4). The way to know the triune God intimately, to experience the relational communion promised in the new covenant, is not complex. Jesus calls us to keep his commandments, or keep his word, which is essentially what he means when he says, “Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1). Jesus doesn’t give us a list of rituals, ascetic rigors, detailed prayer requirements, long pilgrimages, meditative practices, or instructions for creating special aesthetic environments to experience communion with him and the Father through the Spirit. The way is simple: “Believe in me.”

The Way Is Hard

The way may be simple to understand, but, as Jesus says elsewhere, “The way is hard that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14). The complexity and difficulty for us come not from the way itself, but from the evil we face: the internal evil of our unbelief or “little faith” (Matthew 17:20), combined with the effects of remaining sin dwelling in our members (Romans 7:21–23), and the external evil existing in a world that “lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). Learning to overcome the obstacles presented to us by our sin-infected flesh and the devil-filled world (1 John 2:16) is very hard indeed.

But the way to more deeply knowing, loving, and trusting God is by faithfully persevering through the great difficulties, and through receiving God’s grace of forgiveness when we fail (1 John 1:9). For God uses these difficulties as opportunities to manifest more dimensions of himself to us. Through tribulations, we experience that Jesus has overcome the world (John 16:33), that his grace is sufficient in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), and that he “is able to make all grace abound to [us], so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, [we] may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). We come to know more of him.

Through this hard way that leads to life, we also repeatedly encounter the reality that God is true to his “living and active” word (Hebrews 4:12). And we discover that the reality we’re encountering is not merely a set of propositions, but a Person: Jesus, who is the living Word (John 1:1). We discover, in fact, that Jesus is the way that leads to him, the life (John 14:6). And when it comes to our practical pursuit of God, we discover that the Lord most often and most profoundly reveals himself to us “by the word of the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:21).

For Those Who Want More

It’s possible that this may strike you as disappointing, as if the secret to intimacy with God is “read your Bible more.” Because what you long for is something more. You want to be near God and to encounter him more personally than you seem to experience when you read your Bible or hear God’s word preached and taught and discussed. If so, your disappointment could be resulting from one or all of the following possibilities.

First, it’s possible that your exposure to God’s word has outpaced your obedience to it. A familiar and accurate grasp of God’s word is only as good as your behavior-determining belief in it. Jesus said this to some of the most frequent Bible readers of his day: “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). Jesus discloses himself intimately only to those who keep his word. It’s worth prayerful examination.

Second, it’s possible you have a misconception of what intimacy with God should feel like, which has given rise to expectations based on a kind of fantasy, not unlike the unreal expectations we can bring to romantic love or deep human friendships. Remember, our most intimate marriages and closest friendships usually result from a few intense experiences that punctuate many ordinary times that all build trust and deepen love.

Third, it’s possible we might think that the word of the Lord is a poor substitute for the Lord’s manifest personal presence. And in a sense, of course, that’s true. But think of what makes your most intimate, manifestly present friends so meaningful. Ultimately, the words through which you disclose yourselves to each other in mutual trust, along with the promises you faithfully keep, create the intimacy you enjoy. So it is with God.

Now We Know in Part

But it’s also possible that your longing for more is your inconsolable longing to be with your Beloved, the longing all true disciples of Jesus experience. You have come to know Jesus and love him and trust him, but you are keenly and sometimes painfully aware that the wonderful disclosures God has made to you are like a splash of the ocean of joy you someday will swim in (Psalm 16:11). You’re aware that now you only “see in a mirror dimly” what he’s revealed to you, that now you know only in part, but later you will know fully, “even as [you] have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). There’s part of you that’s weary of the betrothal phase of your relationship with Jesus, and you long for the wedding, when the full marriage will at last be consummated.

For most of us, our discontent with our current level of intimacy with God comes from a mixture of the above: slowness to obey, misconceptions of what leads to our desired intimacy, and a longing that will be realized only when we finally see our Beloved face-to-face. But all these causes are reasons for great hope because they all point to the fact that there truly is more. There is more of God to know, more of God to love, and more ways we can deepen our trust and intimacy with him through faithfully keeping his word.

Whatever the cause of our longing, the Spirit is stirring in us a desire that comes from God. Because it’s his great desire, the very heart of the new covenant, that we all really know him. And someday, perhaps sooner than we think, God will bring to pass his precious and very great promise:

No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. (Jeremiah 31:34)

In the meantime, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3).

My Flesh Is True Food: The Meaning of an Offensive Image

The day after Jesus performed his largest-scale pre-crucifixion miracle — the feeding of the five thousand — he issued one of his most offensive and misunderstood statements.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. (John 6:53–55)

Up to this point, the growing crowd had been thrilled with Jesus. After all, he could heal the sick and feed the masses! Was this the long-awaited Prophet? Soon they would want to make him their king (John 6:14–15). But Jesus discerned something defective about their enthusiasm.

They desired more loaves from heaven (John 6:34), but not the bread he had come to give them: himself (John 6:51–52). So, he tested their spiritual discernment with a series of increasingly provocative statements, culminating in the one above. They took offense; it sounded like cannibalism. The “Jesus for King” campaign suddenly evaporated. Turns out he was right about their lack of discernment. They seriously misunderstood what he was saying.

And they wouldn’t be the last. People have misunderstood these verses for the last two thousand years — including Christians. Over time, significant Christian traditions, such as Roman Catholicism, developed Jesus’s words into the doctrine of transubstantiation, the belief “that during the Eucharist, the body of Jesus Christ himself is truly eaten and his blood truly drunk. The bread becomes his actual body, and the wine his actual blood.”

But that’s not what Jesus meant. How do we know this? He gave us plenty of clues.

Spiritual Realities Spiritually Discerned

First, this wasn’t the first time Jesus used metaphors to unveil spiritual reality. A few verses later, he describes the hidden power and meaning of his teaching to his disciples (some of whom were offended along with the crowd):

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. (John 6:63–64)

In other words, “No one will understand what I am saying unless the Spirit reveals it.” A similar misunderstanding happens when Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Nicodemus is confused, thinking Jesus is referring to a literal physical birth, but Jesus’s words are “spirit and life” — he is referring to a spiritual birth.

Again, a chapter later, when Jesus speaks with the Samaritan woman at the well, he offers her living water. Confused, she responds, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” (John 4:10–11). Jesus’s words, however, are “spirit and life.” They mean far more than she realizes, and that meaning can only be spiritually discerned.

Again and again, Jesus uses provocative metaphorical language to help people see who he is and how they might obtain eternal life through him.

What Does It Mean to Feed?

Now, let’s narrow in on the immediate context of John 6 — which was a discussion regarding bread — because it contains more clues to what Jesus meant by, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (John 6:54). I’ll highlight four of Jesus’s statements in particular, italicizing the key phrases.

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (John 6:27–29)

“The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.” (John 6:33–36)

This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:40)

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. (John 6:47)

What is Jesus’s point in these statements? The way we labor for the food that endures to eternal life is by believing in Jesus. The way we satisfy our spiritual hunger and quench our spiritual thirst is by believing in Jesus. The way to obtain the resurrection from the dead is to believe in Jesus. The way to receive eternal life is to believe in Jesus.

Eating Is Believing

Now, let’s return to Jesus’s provocative flesh-and-blood teaching:

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. . . . Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. (John 6:47–55)

In light of the clues we’ve examined, what is the most likely meaning of eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood? Jesus means eating is believing, drinking is believing, because Jesus promises eternal life to those who believe in him.

Outside of John 6, neither Jesus nor any of the apostles teaches anything that would support transubstantiation. And for John’s part specifically, he doesn’t even record the Lord’s Supper in his Gospel. If he really believed transubstantiation was what Jesus meant by his statements in John 6, wouldn’t he have made that connection by describing the very event through which that doctrine would be applied?

Eating Is Remembering and Proclaiming

The clearest teaching the New Testament provides regarding the Lord’s Supper comes from the apostle Paul.

I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23–26)

Paul teaches his readers to understand the Lord’s Supper as a spiritual eating and drinking that, like baptism, physically symbolizes and mediates a spiritual reality.

Through the meal, we remember that by faith we receive what Jesus has done for us, and in faith we proclaim that reality to others. Receive and proclaim what? What Jesus’s death accomplished for us: his substitutionary death on our behalf — the breaking of his body and spilling of his blood — pays in full the penalty of guilt for our sin (Hebrews 10:12–14), and his perfect righteousness is freely given to us in exchange for our unrighteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is the New Testament’s clear teaching of the Christian gospel.

Based on Jesus’s teaching in John 6 and Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 11, the saving grace of what many call the Eucharist resides not in Jesus’s physical presence residing in the elements of bread and wine, but in Jesus’s spiritual presence at the Table by his Spirit and residing in the believer through his faith in what the elements communicate. Which means the significance of the Lord’s Supper is remembering the saving grace we have received through the Lord’s death and proclaiming the offer of that saving grace to our own souls and to others — until he comes.

Escape from Every Temptation

If you’re old enough to read this, you are an experienced veteran of sinful temptation, having encountered it every day of your life since you began to discern right from wrong. As an experienced veteran, you’ll surely agree that we need all the help we can get when sinful anger begins to boil, or when we find our eyes pulled toward a forbidden desire, or when indulging laziness looks very appealing, or when some icy fear of death draws us in a faithless direction (more on this in a moment).

The good news is that strong help is available: Jesus is a “merciful and faithful high priest” who is “able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:17–18). We could say he is mercifully eager and faithfully able to help us.

But what exactly does this mean? How does Jesus’s ministry as our high priest help us in the heat of a tempting moment?

How Our High Priest Helps Us

The author of Hebrews addresses this question in Hebrews 2:14–18:

Since . . . the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Let’s examine the three primary ways this text explains how Jesus, as our high priest, helps us in temptation.

1. He makes us offspring of Abraham.

First, our merciful and faithful high priest “helps the offspring of Abraham” (Hebrews 2:16).

The New Testament makes clear that the offspring of Abraham are not primarily his genetic offspring, but those “who [share] the faith of Abraham” (Romans 4:16). This may sound simple, but it required some serious high-priestly work on Jesus’s part.

Jesus had to “be made like [us] in every respect” so he could (1) obey his Father perfectly on our behalf, and (2) offer himself as a “once for all” sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27) to make “propitiation for our sins” (Hebrews 2:17). In doing this, he “[broke] down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile, “that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two” (Ephesians 2:14–15). Now, all the eternal covenant promises of God are included in the new covenant — the better covenant our high priest mediates (Hebrews 8:6) — and therefore apply to all who are in Christ. In Christ, then, God fulfilled his promise to Abraham that “in [him] all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).

Jesus is faithfully able to help us because he mercifully made it possible for us to become Abraham’s offspring, allowing us to marshal all of God’s promises against temptation, since they all “find their Yes” for us in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20). The fear of death provides some examples of how this works.

2. He liberates us from the fear of death.

Second, our merciful and faithful high priest partook of “flesh and blood . . . that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14–15).

The fear of death is a gateway through which all manner of temptation enters to enslave us. And this fear occurs on two levels. The first is our awareness of our mortality. We all fear death. Our desire to live and not die isn’t itself sinful, just like it wasn’t sinful for Jesus. But the devil knows how to tap into our instinctive fear of death.

This side of the fall, Satan often tempts us in the opposite way he tempted Adam and Eve. Now he may tell us, “You shall not surely live. Eternal life is a delusion, and your life is a vapor. So, you better grab as much life as you can while you have it.” To the degree we believe him, we will waste inordinate amounts of time, energy, and money trying to mitigate death’s threats. We might orient our lives around postponing death as long as possible by seeking first the preservation of our health rather than trusting Jesus’s promise that if we “seek first the kingdom of God . . . all [we need] will be added to [us]” (Matthew 6:33). Or we might prioritize “bucket list” experiences and pleasures for fear that we’ll miss out on life rather than trusting Jesus’s promise that “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). Or we might try to distract ourselves from the thought of death through numbing, banal entertainment and obsession over current events and controversies rather than trusting Jesus’s promise that in him is where we will find peace, for he has “overcome the world” (John 16:33).

But Jesus is faithfully able to help us by mercifully becoming “the resurrection and the life” for us. He promises abundant life for those who believe him, beginning now and extending through eternity (John 11:25; 10:10; 3:16).

The second level where we experience fear of death is our awareness of our sinfulness. Knowing that “after death comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27), when “each of us will give an account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12), we can become vulnerable to the tempting fear of condemnation. The devil does his best to convince us that Jesus’s atoning work will not save us from the guilt of our sin, and thus he seeks to enslave us to the endless pursuit of trying to achieve our own righteousness.

But Jesus is faithfully able to help us because he mercifully has taken away our guilt of sin, which is the “sting of death,” by “becoming a curse for us,” so that through love, we now can have “confidence for the day of judgment,” thereby “[giving] us the victory” (1 Corinthians 15:56–57; Galatians 3:13; 1 John 4:17).

On both levels, Jesus is mercifully eager and faithfully able to deliver us from a lifelong enslavement to the fear of death.

3. He always intercedes for us.

Third, our merciful and faithful high priest was “made like [us] in every respect,” and so, “because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:17–18).

This means that Jesus is mercifully able to “sympathize with our weaknesses,” having “in every respect . . . been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). And since “he always lives to make intercession for [us]” with the Father, he faithfully provides us “the way of escape” for each temptation we face, so we can faithfully endure it (Hebrews 7:25; 1 Corinthians 10:13).

And even when we do fail and succumb to temptation, because of the whole scope of Jesus’s high-priestly ministry, “if we confess our sins, [the Father] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). He is both faithfully able and mercifully eager to forgive.

Help in Every Temptation

This is the good news we have when facing temptation: strong help is available. Jesus, our Great High Priest, is eager to help us because he’s merciful and sympathetic, and he’s able to help us because he’s faithful in his service to God on our behalf.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

When we’re tempted, Jesus helps us keep the true Story of redemption in view so we’re not sucked into the distorted, deceiving story the temptation is telling us. And when we do keep that Story in view, we discover the escape our high priest provides for us.

And when we fail and sin, we don’t need to wallow in condemnation (Romans 8:1–2), but confess our sin, receive our promised forgiveness, and get back up and back at it.

So, when we’re tempted today, “Let us . . . with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Because our high priest is mercifully eager and faithfully able to help us.

What Does Disunity Say? Three Common Types of Division

Things fall apart. It’s the second law of thermodynamics. It’s Romans 8:20 happening all around us. It’s a reality I increasingly experience in my body as I pass through the second half of middle age. Cracks permeate everything — including every church I’ve known.

Christian relationships encounter all the temptations common to man. That’s why Christian churches will rarely experience a kind of unity that knows no conflict or struggle.

But an absence of conflict and struggle is not what God has in mind for Christian unity in this age. As I’ve explained more thoroughly elsewhere, God gives unity as part of our inheritance in Christ (Ephesians 1:5, 11), but Christian oneness has a participatory dimension through which God accomplishes some glorious work in us and the world. So when God, through Paul, commands us to eagerly “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3), he intends for this endeavor to be hard — for some very good reasons.

But more than that, God intends our churches to experience seasons of noticeable disunity. In fact, these seasons are necessary, because they bring to light some very important realities. The old hymn pinpoints it well:

Tho’ with a scornful wonder
The world sees her oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed.
Yet saints their watch are keeping;
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.

When it comes to Christian unity in this age of things falling apart, the reality we experience is “sorrowful” over our frequent factions, “yet always rejoicing” over the future grace of perfected unity set before us (2 Corinthians 6:10).

By Schisms Rent Asunder

Church schisms happen, as we all know. And they get a lot of bad press from Christians and non-Christians — often much deserved, as we also know. But schisms perform necessary functions in the church by revealing numerous areas requiring attention. Let me address three types of division in the church.

1. Fleshly Schisms

Paul illustrates the first type of schism in his blunt reproof of the Corinthian church:

I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? (1 Corinthians 3:1–3)

Fleshly schisms plagued this church. They were divided into partisan loyalties and impressed by worldly wisdom and rhetoric (chapters 1–3), easily swayed by those who slandered Paul in his absence (chapter 4), tolerating shocking sexual immorality (chapter 5), suing each other in civil court (chapter 6), damaging each other’s faith over issues of Christian freedom (chapter 8), and more. Paul didn’t call them false Christians; he called them fleshly Christians — people governed more by carnal discernment and desires than by the Spirit in numerous areas.

True Christian unity can be experienced and maintained only where Christlike love governs — the kind Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. Therefore, it’s a much-needed mercy to bring our unity-killing fleshliness into the light so we can see it and repent. And church schisms often perform that function.

2. Maturity Schisms

A second type of schism overlaps with the first, but its function is distinct enough to highlight. I call them maturity schisms.

Any healthy, evangelizing, disciple-making church will have differing levels of maturity among its members. And when people of diverse maturity levels come together, conflicts will erupt. Different life experiences, scriptural knowledge, and overall sanctification will stretch the church.

Differences in maturity run many different ways. A younger person might have more life experience in a certain area than an older person. Or someone who’s been a Christian a long time might be more governed by the flesh than a newer convert. Or a less formally trained saint might have a more profound, life-transforming grasp of Scripture than a seminary-trained saint. On top of that, some members who “ought to be teachers” may have regressed in maturity by habitually indulging sin, and so they need milk again (Hebrews 5:12).

Here’s my point: the maturity diversity that’s part of normal, healthy church life produces a complex relational recipe for a lot of misunderstanding and plenty of pride-fueled conflicts. Positively, this gives us all opportunities to learn from each other and grow in grace. Negatively, we don’t always seize these opportunities, and sometimes they grow into various schisms.

3. Necessary Schisms

Paul also addresses a third type of church schism in 1 Corinthians 11:19:

There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

As Jesus taught in the parable of the weeds in the wheat (Matthew 13:24–30), our churches in this age will remain a mixture of Christians and non-Christians, no matter how seriously we take membership. Some weeds, thankfully, will become wheat by the end. But some are weeds, and often it’s schisms — factions — that reveal them.

And some of these weeds grow into a league of their own, as we know from urgent apostolic warnings of false teachers:

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. (Romans 16:17–18)

You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. (Jude 17–19)

These false Christians are “fierce wolves” that prey on the flock of God, “men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:30), causing distress in our churches by their heresies. And one clear way we can recognize that they are not genuine is by the disunity they create due to “contrary doctrine” and “ungodly passions.”

Gifted Unifiers

In addressing church unity, Paul explains why godly, mature, loving, wise, Scripture-soaked, straight-talking leaders in various roles are such valuable gifts to any church. They

equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11–13)

This is a hard calling, requiring proven character, wisdom, knowledge, and a track record of “walk[ing] by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16). Therefore, church leaders must not be spiritually immature (1 Timothy 3:1–7) lest they pour the gasoline of fleshliness on the flames of emerging church schisms rather than the water of sacrificial love and godly wisdom.

Mature leaders foster cultures in their churches that help saints pursue “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” And they’re not naive. They know that factors like fleshliness, maturity diversity, and false Christians make this corporate pursuit hard. But they also know it’s necessarily hard. In this age.

‘How Long?’

But this age isn’t forever. An age approaches when weeds will not grow among the wheat, when our sinful flesh will no longer influence us, and when whatever different maturity levels may exist will no longer result in conflicts. “We [will] all [finally] attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). We will all experience the unity that is our inheritance in Christ, and all be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one (John 17:21).

Till then, let’s not give up the fight to be one. In this fight for unity, we experience numerous aspects of the Father’s varied grace. Forced to wrestle with our own sin as we pursue unity, we experience much-needed sanctification by the Spirit. And as we struggle to attain and maintain unity, we discover and experience priceless dimensions of the love of Christ and display it for the world (John 13:35).

And our desire to experience the “not yet” promise of the completed, perfected, harmonious oneness of the body of Christ causes us to long, groan, and pray for the age to come. It keeps us saints watching and crying out, “How long, O Lord?” And the promised joy of perfected unity set before us fuels our hope that “soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.”

Tenacious Grace: How We Become and Stay One

When I was a kid in the seventies, we often sang a song at church events and camps with this lyric:

We are one in the Spirit;
We are one in the Lord.
And we pray that all unity will one day be restored;
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

I remember thinking it was a bit corny; then as a teenager, I blew it off as clichéd as well as stylistically dated. But looking back now, I can see this lyric is actually quite profound, reflecting in simple words the sophisticated theology of Christian unity.

It’s a strange logic: in Christ, we’re already one, but we’re not yet one, so we must strive to achieve, maintain, or restore our oneness, until we finally attain our perfect, eternal oneness.

Strange Logic of Heaven

What makes this unity logic strange is that it begins with the assertion that we’re already one — otherwise, it follows a natural logical progression. But that’s just the thing: this logic is not natural; it’s supernatural. It’s the logic of heaven.

And it isn’t applied only to unity. We see this logic throughout the New Testament. The kingdom of God has come (Luke 17:20–21), and at the same time the kingdom of God is in the process of coming (Matthew 16:28). Christians have “been saved” (Ephesians 2:8), and at the same time we are in the process of “being saved” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Christians “have been sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10), and at the same time we are in the process of “being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

So, when it comes to Christian unity, it shouldn’t surprise us that we’re told we “are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28), while at the same time becoming one (Ephesians 4:13). This logic reflects the nature of this awkward age between the inauguration and the consummation of Christ’s kingdom, which Christian theologians call the era of the already–not yet. In this era, our status as redeemed saints is complete, but our experience of redemption is partial. We are becoming what we are.

But as strange as this heavenly logic might sound, it makes very practical sense in our day-to-day lives as Christians. Here’s how.

‘Already’ Fuels ‘Not Yet’

God’s inexpressible gift of salvation in Christ is something we inherit from our Father as his adopted children (Ephesians 1:5, 11). But this inherited gift has a participatory dimension:

Our justification (Romans 3:23–25) and the faith to receive it are given to us by God as a free (inherited) gift of his grace, and the evidence that this grace-gift is at work in us comes through our (participatory) “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5).

It’s the participatory dimension of our inherited gift of salvation (and countless facets of this gift, like Christian unity) that explains the New Testament’s teaching on grace and works. The New Testament teaches that we are saved by God’s grace alone (Ephesians 2:8–9), and that works are necessary to our salvation (James 2:24). This can sound like a contradiction, but it’s not. Our works are not necessary in the causal sense — we don’t merit salvation by our works. Our works are necessary in the evidential sense — the fruit of works organically grows on branches that by faith abide in the “true vine” (John 15:1, 5).

This is the new-covenant reality of “by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). We are saved by grace alone through the gift of faith alone, and the observable evidence that we are heirs of God’s gracious gift of salvation is manifest through our “work[s] of faith and labor[s] of love” (1 Thessalonians 1:3) — our obedience of faith. That’s what Jesus was getting at when he said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And it’s what his brother, James, was getting at when he said, “I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18).

Now, here’s how heaven’s already–not yet logic works as it pertains to our inherited oneness as Christians. Believing that we’re already one fuels our faith in God’s promise that, ultimately, we will be perfectly one. And it fuels our hope that all the obedient works of faith and labors of love to achieve, maintain, or restore our unity in this partial age — as discouraging and futile as they might appear to us at times — are not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Our Duty: Tenacious Grace

Paul employs this heavenly logic when he urges the Ephesians (and us) to pursue unity in the opening verses of Ephesians 4:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. (Ephesians 4:1–4)

Christian unity is part of the inherited gift we receive when God, by his free, sovereign choice in election (Ephesians 1:4–6), calls us into the body of Christ. But it is also our participatory duty to “maintain the unity of the Spirit” as part of this gift of God’s calling.

To get some idea of the demanding nature of this duty, this obedience of faith, we just need to consider the little word all in Ephesians 4:2. We must bear with one another “with all humility and gentleness.” When was the last time you truly felt eager to maintain unity in a situation that required you to exercise all humility or all gentleness — in other words, in the middle of a significant, frustrating disagreement? Yeah, me too.

This is nothing less than a call to tenacious grace and Calvary love. What happened on Calvary? Death. Voluntary death. Voluntary death for the sake of love. Voluntary death for the sake of love on behalf of those who don’t deserve that kind of love. This is love with rebar in its resolve; this is love with a spine of steel.

When Jesus commanded us to love one another just as he has loved us (John 13:34), this was the kind of love he was talking about.

By Our Love

That old chorus we used to sing fifty years ago ended on a convicting refrain: “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” It’s a close paraphrase of Jesus’s words in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This might be a good time to bring that old chorus back.

Repeat that refrain a few times together as a church and, if the Spirit moves among us, it will provoke some hard questions. Especially when we think of how Jesus longed and prayed for our unity:

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 17:20–21)

It requires the self-sacrificial love of tenacious grace to die to our own remaining sin and graciously bear with the remaining sin in other saints. But it’s this love that bears witness that we are followers of the One who laid his life down for his friends (John 15:13).

This unity is our inheritance in Christ. We are already one. Believing this fuels our faith in God’s promise that, ultimately, we will be perfectly one. And it will fuel all the obedient works of faith and labors of love that achieve, maintain, or restore our unity in this partial age. But we can’t do it alone. We need the Helper (John 14:26). For the love it requires to maintain the unity of the Spirit comes from the Spirit of unity himself.

Why Is Christian Unity So Hard?

Why is unity in the church so hard? If you’re like me, this question can prompt tears.

Mentioning tears tells you I’m not talking about disunity in the church in general. I’m talking about disunity in churches we know and love, and between Christians we know and love.

And for the most part, I’m not talking about disunity fueled by higher-level disagreements over primary Christian doctrines (ones that define the bounds of Christianity) or even secondary doctrines (ones that define, say, the bounds of a denomination). I’m talking about the far more common kind of disunity fueled by the endless variety of conflicts that break apart relationships, and even whole churches, because earnest, sincere Christians fail to humbly, gently, patiently “[bear] with one another in love” and cease being “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1–3).

If you’re like me, you’ve seen too much of this, and you wonder, sometimes with tears, “Why is unity in the church so hard?”

But, if you’re like me, this question might also reveal misguided assumptions we have about what Christian unity is supposed to be like. What I found lurking behind my question (and I don’t think I’m unusual here) was this assumption: unity between Christians who love and trust Jesus, are filled by his Spirit, and largely agree theologically, should not be this hard. It seems reasonable on its face. But a reasonable assumption doesn’t make a right assumption, especially when the Bible doesn’t support it.

Unity Has Always Been Hard

Don’t get me wrong: God is all for unity between God’s children. Scripture describes the experience of unity as “good and pleasant” (Psalm 133:1), and it commands all Christians to diligently pursue “being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord” (Philippians 2:2).

But nowhere in the Bible does God promise that the pursuit of unity, even among real, Spirit-filled, earnest Christians, won’t be as hard as it often is — any more than it promises that battling our indwelling sin won’t be as hard as it often is, or that suffering won’t be as devastating as it is, or that the whole endeavor of Christian love (of which pursuing unity is one aspect) won’t be as costly and humanly impossible as it is.

If anything, the fact that the New Testament records so many Christians struggling and failing to be unified should tip us off that unity is anything but easy. We only need to read through the letters of Paul to see this. Here’s just a small sampling of how often he addresses the issue of unity:

He reproves the Corinthians for their “quarrelling” and “divisions” (1 Corinthians 1:10–11). He warns the Galatians against the dangers of “rivalries, dissensions, divisions” (Galatians 5:20). He entreats “Euodia and . . . Syntyche [in Philippi] to agree in the Lord” and pleads with others to intervene (Philippians 4:2). He instructs the Colossians, “Forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you” (Colossians 3:13). And he exhorts the Ephesians not to indulge in “corrupting talk” so as to “not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” and to put away “all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander . . . along with all malice” (Ephesians 4:29–31).

I could quote many more. Which is why I say that the Bible doesn’t support our assumptions that Christian unity shouldn’t be as hard it is to attain and maintain. It’s been this hard since the earliest days of the church.

Why Unity Is Hard

Okay, so God doesn’t promise that unity won’t be hard — and, apparently, it’s always been hard. But that still leaves us with the question, “Why is unity in the church so hard?”

There are, of course, an endless number of factors. Consider that at any given time a church may be under heavy spiritual assault (Ephesians 6:12), infiltrated by wolves in sheep’s clothing (Acts 20:29), plagued by “rivalries, dissensions, divisions” stirred up by unbelievers who think they’re Christians (Galatians 5:19–21), trying to tempt immature believers to engage in partisan quarrels (1 Corinthians 3:1–4), and on and on.

But I’ll give two important high-level reasons we glean from Scripture for why unity in the church is as hard as it is — indeed, why, for our ultimate joy and his glory, God designed it to be as hard as it is.

Our Unity Refines Us

Scripture tells us that Jesus “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). In other words, Jesus’s substitutionary, atoning death purchased the gift of our forgiveness (he “bore our sins”) and the gift of our holiness (“that we might die to sin and live to righteousness”). Our holiness is a gift of God’s grace. Which means anything God designs to transform us into the likeness of his holy Son is a great gift. But sanctifying gifts tend to arrive in painful packages, because learning to die to sin and live to righteousness is almost always hard and often painful.

That’s why “maintain[ing] the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) is usually hard. Paul says it requires that we “put off [our] old self, which belongs to [our] former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” — die to sin — “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” — live to righteousness (Ephesians 4:22–24). Our pursuit of unity is designed to give us many opportunities to die to our own sin and bear with the sin of others.

Our Unity Exalts Christ

What image comes to mind when you hear Jesus’s words, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35)? I tend to imagine some kind of idyllic Christian community of love — a kind of Christian community I’ve never seen, even in Scripture, even in those first sweet chapters of Acts.

What image did Jesus have in mind? We can see it in the previous verse: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). Jesus was about to “lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And he told his friends (all of us) to love one another “just as I have loved you.” Jesus was envisioning a cruciform community of Christians whose sacrificial love for one another frequently required them to take “the form of a servant,” pick up their cross, and “count others more significant than [themselves]” (Philippians 2:3, 7).

The pursuit of unity is hard because the love of God is costly. The love of the Father and the Son was most clearly and climactically displayed on the cross, and so our love for one another is designed to publicly display Godlike love in the world. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). That’s how all people will know we’re Jesus’s disciples.

Never Give Up

The pursuit of Christian unity in a local church is a high calling. It’s a means of our growing in Christlikeness through sanctification, and it’s a means of proclaiming the otherworldly love of Christ through demonstrating the otherworldly love of Christ in a love-starved world.

It can be a heartbreaking pursuit in view of how often we fail. But let’s keep it in perspective. It’s no less surprising that we too frequently fail to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, than that we too frequently fail to continually abide in Jesus (John 15:4), strive for holiness (Hebrews 12:14), pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), love our enemies (Luke 6:27), bless those who persecute us (Romans 12:14), or count it all joy when we experience various trials (James 1:2).

Let’s not allow our failures to obey to become excuses to keep disobeying. Let’s put the 1 John 1:9 grace of God on public display by confessing and repenting of our sins and receiving God’s and one another’s forgiveness. And then let’s put the tenacious, gracious love of God on display by resolving to never give up, “so far as it depends on [us]” (Romans 12:18), seeking to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Christian unity is a high call, and a hard call. In fact, it’s impossible apart from “the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:19), for apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. For unity is not about fulfilling our idyllic expectations, but about displaying the reality of the redeeming, sanctifying love of God.