Jon Bloom's Blog, page 31

Child-Like Humility Produces Peace

One of the shortest psalms of the Bible gives us a beautiful picture of the kind of peace and quiet that God wants us to experience:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 131:1–3)

It is the peace and quiet of a weaned child. What is that?

Great Humility Looks Like a Small Child

When David said his heart was not lifted up and his eyes were not raised, his original Hebrew readers would have clearly understood what he meant. His son, Solomon, later used similar imagery when he wrote, “Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin” (Proverbs 21:4). David was talking about pride.

We tend to think of David as a humble man, which is a right tendency because he often was. But humility didn’t come naturally to David. He, like us, was all too aware of the incessant prideful impulses of his fallen nature, which at times he followed and which led him into grievous trouble. Therefore, David, like us, was often painfully aware of his pride-induced transgressions, and there were times his sin was ever before him (Psalm 51:3).

We don’t know the events that prompted David to pen this short psalm. But we know two things: 1) His afflictions were many (Psalm 34:19) and 2) We often respond to our own afflictions the same way. We quickly lift our hearts and raise our eyes in pride when we are opposed or maligned or suffer in some way.

David’s life was frequently embattled and often threatened. With the complexities and tragedies he faced, it must have been difficult to set aside the things “too great” for him — the “why’s” he couldn’t figure out. We only need to think of how hard it is to set our anxieties and fears aside, things “too marvelous” for us, and rest in trust on God’s promises. We know just how easy it is to grumble and not to be humble.

So in these few words, David is giving us a model of what it looks like to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand (1 Peter 5:6): Great humility typically looks like a small child.

Why a Weaned Child?

But David has a particular child in mind: a weaned child. “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother” (Psalm 131:2). Why did David choose a weaned child as his model of humility?

A nursing child is a beautiful picture of a restful, comforted dependence on a mother’s provision. It is an idyllic picture of what it looks like to receive necessary nourishment at a needed time from a trusted source.

A weaned child is a different picture altogether.

In ancient Near Eastern cultures, children weren’t weaned from breastfeeding until at least three years of age, and sometimes older. By those ages, children’s cognitive and verbal abilities were normally quite developed. This meant that the transition from the familiar comfort and nourishment of a mother’s breast to no longer receiving such comfort and nourishment would have been psychologically and emotionally more difficult than for a younger child. One can imagine a three year-old’s tears and anger and insistence and complaints and pleas and repeated physical attempts to nurse again, only to be denied by the one person who had up to that point been the source of such intimate comfort and nourishment. Why won’t Mommy nurse me anymore?

A recently weaned child is a child who has experienced deprivation, disappointment, confusion, and grief. Such a child who has quieted his soul and is peacefully sitting beside his mother, no longer demanding what has been denied to him, is a child who has submitted his will to his mother’s will. The reasons why being denied his mother’s breast is the best thing for him are still “too great” for him to understand. But he has endured the struggle, worked through the grief, dried the tears, and is finally willing to trust his mother’s wisdom that “solid food is for the mature” (Hebrews 5:14). He is beginning to bear the peaceful fruit that comes from the discipline of a loving parent’s training (Hebrews 12:11).

Child-Like Hope in the Lord Forever

So a weaned child is the picture of peaceful humility that illustrates David’s hope in God. David does not fully understand the reasons for his deprivation, disappointment, confusion, and grief. He has endured struggle, dismay, and tears. But now he sits in peace beside his divine Parent, chastened and humbled and willing to trust that God knows what’s best for him.

And it is in this spirit of a weaned child that David says to us, the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), “O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore” (Psalm 131:3). Hope in the God who weans his children. “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6; Proverbs 3:12), and his painful weaning is for our good, even though this good may be too marvelous for us to yet understand.

If we trust in God now, if we will place our hope in him now, we will know peace, and our hope will last forevermore.

More from Desiring God

Take a Break from the Chaos | Our souls need quiet retreats. We may not know how badly we need silence and solitude until we get to know them. Some counsel on taking a retreat.

Join Me in Soul-Satisfaction in God | John Piper preaches on Psalm 131 and explores a kind of contentment, or stillness, or quietness of soul, that is rooted not in circumstances, but in God — a God who never changes in his utter commitment to us in Christ.

The Painful Discipline of Our Heavenly Father | John Piper unpacks Hebrews 12:3–11 and explores God’s design in his sovereign governing of our adversaries and circumstances. The design of God is love. Our pain is not the effect of God’s hate, but of God’s love. Will you believe this?

God Is Our Source of Satisfaction

Jonathan Edwards said, “The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.” Oh, what a glorious truth!

This truth is the message of the Bible to humans in a nutshell. This was the glory of the Edenic garden. Its eclipse was the tragedy of the fall from grace. This has always been at the heart of true, saving faith in all the saints, old and new covenant. This truth was the core issue in ancient Israel’s most glorious and most disgraceful moments. And restoring lost people’s ability to see and believe this truth is at the heart of why Jesus came, died, and rose again. He came to bring us to God, our exceeding joy (1 Peter 3:18; Psalm 43:4).

Our souls are meant to enjoy God supremely and all else in him. This truth will give every pleasure we enjoy fully forever the substance of its exquisite sweetness (Psalm 16:11).

God Is the Sun

Edwards said that everything else that bring us happiness in this age, “the most pleasant accommodations . . . fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the Sun.”

God is the sun. Understanding this reality makes all reality understandable.

The sun is not God, as some of the ancients mistook. But the sun tells us of God. Its refrain in the heavenly oratory of God’s glory (Psalm 19:1-2) is, “God is the sun! In his light we see light!” (Psalm 36:9).

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Deadly Planets Without a Sun

Our sun holds its planets in orbit with incomprehensible gravitational power and gives miraculous, abundant life to planet Earth.

But what would happen if the Earth decided it no longer wished to orbit the sun, but launched off on its own course to seek its life from other sources? What if it believed that the voluptuous, eroticism of Venus would slake its craving? What if it believed the key to its joy was in wielding the scepter of power it thought Jupiter possessed? What if Earth believed that venerating Saturn really would unlock the secret to its soil’s wealth-producing, future-securing fertility?

What would happen is that the sun-giving life of Earth would die and all of Earth’s pregnant hopes of finding satisfaction in Saturn (money), Venus (sex), and Jupiter (power) would be stillborn.

And this of course is the human condition. We have exchanged the sun for the empty promise of barren planets.

“What’s wrong with us at root [is] that instead of putting the worth of God on display with our money, sex, and power, we, by nature, actually make him disappear, as if the Creator and Sustainer of everything were inconsequential.” (Money, Sex, & Power: Living in the Light, p. 21)

It isn’t that money, sex, and power are evils. In their proper orbits, they are glorious. But if we reject the sun and pull these planetary glories from their orbits to either serve as our suns or orbit around our darkened desires, they turn deadly. Our moral universe is thrown into destructive chaos and all our pursuits of sunlit happiness end in dark, barren misery.

“The Bible shows us another way. When [Jesus Christ] takes his glorious place at the center of the solar system of our lives, the massive pull of his all-satisfying beauty corrects the erratic path of every planet, and makes the whole system sing with joy.” (Money, Sex, & Power: Living in the Light, p. 149)

Live in the Light of the Sun of Joy

Yes! “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1) and he makes the morning stars all sing for joy (Job 38:7)! Do you hear them?

O Sun of righteousness, grant ears to hear!

Hear the sun silently shout as its life-giving light floods and feeds the Earth, “God is the sun! In his light we see light! Wealthy Saturn, erotic Venus, and powerful Jupiter are all glorious in their proper orbits, but barren and deadly as surrogate suns. God is the Sun of joy! Live in his light!”

Not just the sun, but the whole cosmic chorus of general revelation sings that Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12), the life that is the light of men (John 1:4). And all in beautiful harmony with the song special revelation sings from beginning to end.

Come, live in the light of the Sun of Joy! For “the enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.”

New from John Piper

Money, sex, and power.

The world tends to worship them. And yet God made us to enjoy them.

In Living in the Light, John Piper helps us discover how to keep these three dangerous opportunities in the orbits that they were designed for, experiencing them in a way that satisfies you, serves the world, and glorifies God.

Now available for hardback and for free download in three digital formats.

Come, All Who Are Weary

Deep soul weariness: We all experience it, though in different ways and for different reasons.

Sometimes we can point to a significant factor, but often we can’t. Our weariness results from the cumulative, multilayered intersections of life’s complexities, bodily frailties, emotional heartbreaks, and the consequences of sin. It surpasses understanding.

Because our burdens are not simple, they are not relieved by simplistic platitudes (“Cheer up! Things are bound to turn around!”). But a simple promise can relieve a complex burden, provided we believe that the power behind the promise is complex and strong enough to relieve our heaviness.

And into our weariness steps the most complex power in existence speaking a promise as simple, hopeful, and refreshing as we could possibly want:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

Come to Me

The simplicity of Jesus’s promise is both striking and refreshing. Jesus doesn’t offer us a four-fold path to peace-giving enlightenment, like the Buddha did. He doesn’t give us five pillars of peace through submission as Islam does. Nor does he give us “10 Ways to Relieve Your Weariness,” which we pragmatic, self-help-oriented 21st century Americans are so drawn to. Unique to anyone else in human history, Jesus simply offers himself as the universal solution to all that burdens us.

And his simple promise is audacious: “Come to me.” The only way that this isn’t megalomaniacal lunacy is if Jesus is who he claims to be: the eternal Word made flesh, our Creator (John 1:1–3, 14; John 8:58; Hebrews 1:1–3). His simple promise implies a power behind it more than sufficient to lift what weighs us down.

What does coming to Jesus mean? When we read the context of this promise (Matthew 11–12), his meaning becomes clear. In his rebuke of the cities (Matthew 11:20–24) and religious leaders (Matthew 12:1–8) that saw firsthand his miraculous works, so clearly demonstrating who he was (John 5:36), and still refused to believe in him, we know that when Jesus said, “come to me,” he meant, “believe in who I claim to be and therefore what I am able to do for you.”

And here is where our burdened souls are tested. Will we believe in him; will we trust him? We want to rest our souls on the knowledge of how and when our burdensome problems will be addressed. But Jesus does not provide those details. He simply promises us that they will be addressed.

Jesus does not want our souls resting on the how and when, as if we are wise enough to understand and determine them. Rather he wants our souls resting on the surety that he will keep his promise to us in the best way at the best time. “Come to me,” he says, “cast your anxieties on me for I care for you” (see 1 Peter 5:7). “Trust in me with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding” (see Proverbs 3:5), he says, “and you will find rest for your souls.”

Rest for Your Souls

Our souls only find rest in hope. That’s what we’re frantically looking for whenever our souls are burdened and restless: hope. And that’s what most of the marketing of most of the products in the world tries to offer us: hope. But they are false hopes for soul-rest, providing only temporary distraction from or briefly masking the effects of our burdened souls. They don’t truly lighten our loads.

No, our burdened souls only truly find rest in one place:

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God. (Psalm 62:5-7)

Jesus knows that he only is our salvation, our fortress, our mighty rock, our refuge. He is the one answer to every question, concern, fear, and need we will ever have. And so he simply and comprehensively offers us himself. For our hope is from him. Only in him will we find rest for our souls.

Take My Yoke and Learn from Me

But if what he promises us is rest, why does he tell us to put on his yoke? A yoke is placed on a beast of burden in order to do some work. Is Jesus offering us rest or work?

That is precisely the question Jesus wants us to ask: What work must we do for him that supposedly will give us rest?

Jesus answered this question in John 6:29: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” And he answered it in John 15:4: “Abide in me” (like a branch in a vine). Believe and abide: that really is all the work God requires of us. Faith (believing and abiding) is resting on the hopeful promises of God. That is the yoke Jesus calls us to put on.

And what is happening here is a yoke-exchange. In the cross, Jesus takes our inconceivably and unbearably heavy yoke of sin’s condemnation and penalty, and offers us in exchange the easy yoke and light burden of simply trusting him. He does all the work and gives us all the rest. And his work not only fully addresses our sin problem, but also provides the supply of every other need we will ever have (Philippians 4:19). All we are required to do is trust him!

And if that wasn’t enough, in becoming human and dwelling among us, Jesus makes it possible for us to learn from him how to live by faith. That’s why the author of Hebrews tell us to,

[look] to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Believe, abide, and follow in his steps (1 Peter 2:21). That’s the light yoke Jesus calls us to put on. It is the only yoke in existence that gives us rest for our souls.

Let’s Come to Jesus Together

Jesus’s great invitation for us to come to him, exchange yokes, and find rest is not intended for us to do in isolation. He intends for us to come to him in community, to come together. That’s one massive reason the church exists.

We all bear burdens and become weary, but in different ways, for different reasons, and often at different times. When we are weary, we are easily discouraged and can be given to cynical unbelief. In those moments we are often not the best preachers for our souls. We need others to speak truth to us and help us believe in Jesus.

That’s why we are not to neglect “to meet together, as is the habit of some, but [to keep on] encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:25). We are to “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13).

So if you are weary, for whatever reason, however complex, Jesus invites you to come. Come, take his light yoke of believing in him. And if it’s hard, don’t come alone. Come to Jesus with and through a believing friend. Believe, abide, and follow Jesus’s example. And you will find rest for your soul.

More from Desiring God

Don’t Give Up | Wars are exhausting — especially long ones. That’s why you are often tired and want to give up. Here are great scriptural encouragements to persevere.

How Do We Rest in the Face of a Horrible Calamity? | Deep confidence in God’s sovereign wisdom and goodness profoundly transforms our emotional reaction to horrible circumstances.

Anxieties: To Be Cast, Not Carried | John Piper preaches from 1 Peter 5:1-11 and explains the threat that anxiety is to humility and how to cast our anxieties on an all-caring God.

The Wisdom of God in the Frustration of Man

Sometimes it takes a good 4,000 years or so to appreciate just how wise God is.

When you read the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11, God’s response can sound like a bit of an overreaction. Humans developed the material and engineering technology to construct a tall Ziggurat on the plain of Shinar. And they had the totally mistaken notion that they could build it to reach the heavens (Genesis 11:4), perhaps building their own access to God’s dwelling. So God’s response was to “confuse their language” in order to frustrate their ambition and dilute the population concentration (Genesis 11:7–8). Why? Did God feel threatened by their faulty tower?

No, God was not threatened by human ingenuity. Rather, God was wisely and mercifully mitigating the threat of human ingenuity to humans and to the rest of creation. When God said, “this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6), he had in mind things far grander than a brick and bitumen tower. He foresaw things that have taken four millennia to dawn on the human mind.

The Towering Century

I don’t know an English superlative that captures the 20th century. The quantum leaps in human technological advancements on almost every front boggle the mind.

When the century began, a two horsepower engine meant two horses were powering your carriage. When it ended, horseless carriages like the Dodge Viper were powered by internal combustion engines containing the equivalent strength of 450 horses. On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright made the first recorded powered flight, a 12-second, 120-foot voyage that reached a top altitude of about 20 feet. On December 19, 1999, the Space Shuttle Discovery took off on an 8-day, 3.2 million mile voyage soaring 317 nautical miles above the earth. Advances in medicine, agriculture, and many other converging technologies increased average human life expectancies in the U.S. 30–40 years, more than doubling them in some demographics. Technological wonders exploded everywhere.

And therefore, so did the horrors. In 1900, the most powerful armies had long-range artillery that could fairly accurately hit targets a few miles away. Barely five decades later and humanity was facing the existential risk of nuclear weapon proliferation. Many of the technological advancements that had power to greatly benefit humanity also had power to destroy it. And as a result, never in the history of the world were so many people destroyed by so few in the course of a hundred years. Statistics vary, but credible calculations put the number of human deaths resulting from wars and armed conflicts in the 20th century to over 230 million.

But as the 21st century dawned, a new disturbing possibility began to appear on the horizon.

The Dawn of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been talked about by foreseeing technological scientists and futurists since the dawn of computing in the late 1930’s. Robots have been part of the popular imagination since the mid-20th century. Scads of novels and films have explored the idea of human-AI compatibility and competition (think HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, C-3PO in Star Wars, Pixar’s WALL-E, or Ultron, the Avengers’s AI nemesis).

Many of us still think of AI as science fiction. But as the decades have passed it has become increasingly less fictional. It’s now all around us and feels normal. You are reading this article on an artificially intelligent device.

We currently live in an era of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), AI that in some cases can outperform humans, but only in a narrowly focused expertise (think Siri or IBM’s chess master Deep Blue).

But some experts are predicting that sooner than we may expect, perhaps only 25–40 years from now, we may reach the era of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where an AI attains the rough equivalent to human intelligence (think C-3PO). And it’s this that has numerous prominent AI thinkers waving yellow and even red flags. For when AGI occurs, it may open the Pandora’s Box of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). This is when an AI attains overall intelligence beyond, and perhaps way, way beyond, human intelligence (think Ultron).

Afraid of Creating God

Some experts don’t believe ASI will materialize. But many do. And the sorts of possibilities that are being seriously discussed by credible and brilliant minds are amazing, even fantastical. The discussions have an increasingly urgent tone because technologies now exist and are emerging that make possibilities feasible that until recently just made for entertaining films. This has some experts euphorically predicting that ASI will help us eradicate human disease and food shortages and successfully colonize other planets. But others warn that we do not know what we might awaken. We may create an intelligence that has the exponential ability to increase and protect its own intelligence and over time assumes qualities that we now only attribute to God. The concerned experts believe this should give us serious pause. Such ASI may have no need for the human race.

It’s not my purpose (or qualification) to weigh in on that discussion. But it is my purpose, in light of the astounding 20th century and what might prove to be more astounding 21st century, to point to the wisdom of God displayed on the plains of Shinar: God knows what he’s doing when he frustrates man.

God Can Be Trusted with Our Frustrated Efforts

When God threw the Ziggurat builders into confusion, they had no idea of the future possibilities. They did not know that the most complex thing in the material universe is the human brain. But God did. He knew the power of collective human ingenuity. He knew its potential power for good, but he also knew its post-Eden potential power for evil on a scale that for the Mesopotamians was yet unimaginable. And in his wisdom and mercy he confused and dispersed the people, much to their frustration.

Now in God’s wisdom he is letting human technological advancement move at a dizzying pace, in spite of the language, culture, geographical, political, and economic obstacles. Why? Beyond what is revealed in Scripture, we, like our ancient ingenious ancestors, do not yet know. But what we who believe Scripture do know is that God can be trusted in these matters. With thousands of years of retrospect, we know more than ever that the wisest thing we can do is to trust God’s promises and purposes far more than our shortsighted perceptions.

And what is true on the massive scale of human history is also true on the micro-scale of our own lives. There are more to the things that frustrate and hinder us, that present us obstacles and delays, that confuse and sometimes disperse us, than we yet see.

So let us not be quick to get angry over our frustrations. The God who presided over the confusion in Shinar presides over our Babel moments, large and small. And for all of us who love him, he promises to turn them for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).

Someday, perhaps in the distant future, we will see in the things that confuse and frustrate us now God’s incredible wisdom and mercy.

More from Desiring God

When God Interrupts Your Plans | It’s hard to see all the little frustrating events and interruptions in our day as divinely placed opportunities to grow in grace, but they are. And seeing them as such helps us take our eyes off ourselves and put them on Christ.

Jesus Will Not Leave You Alone | While you might feel frustrated over a very uncomfortable situation you’re being forced to deal with, Jesus is actually pursuing your long-term comfort through that very situation.

Battling the Unbelief of Impatience | Impatience is a form of unbelief. It springs up in our hearts when the road to success gets muddy or strewn with boulders or blocked by some fallen tree. Here’s encouragement to persevere at the pace God sets on the road of obedience — to wait in God’s place or move at his pace.

The Most Powerful Apologetic Tool in the World

Most people don’t feel the need to struggle with Descartes over how they can be sure that they exist. And most don’t doubt the existence of the sun. These things are self-evident and self-authenticating when one sees them.

And so is Jesus Christ. He is the supreme I am (John 8:58). He is the “sunrise from on high” (Luke 1:78). He is the most self-authenticating Reality that exists. When people really see him, they know who he is.

The Greatest Apologetic Device

I thank God profusely for apologists like C.S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias, William Lane Craig, and many others like them. God gives them to the church to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5) and he uses them to encourage and establish Christians in the faith and to help non-Christians see Jesus for who he really is and become Christians.

But you don’t have to be brilliant to show people who Jesus really is. Most people don’t come to Christ through the sophisticated arguments of top-tier philosophers or theologians, but through the faithful pointing by an ordinary person to the extraordinary brilliance of Jesus as he reveals himself in Scripture.

The Bible itself is the greatest apologetic device that exists in the world. More people come to know and love Jesus Christ simply by reading the Bible than anything else.

The Heart Was Made for the Glory the Bible Reveals

And that’s because, as John Piper says,

There is a template in the human heart created by God ready to receive with self-authenticating certainty [Jesus’s] divine glory. We were made to know and enjoy this person, Jesus Christ, the lowly incarnation of the all-glorious God. We may sense it in our weariness or in our worldwide dreams. But we know. It is written in our hearts. (A Peculiar Glory, 224)

What happens when people read the Bible and are radically transformed into followers of Jesus is that they see him. They see him with true eyes, for which the eyes in our heads are but copies and shadows. Paul calls our true eyes the “eyes of [the] heart” (Ephesians 1:18) or the eyes of the mind (2 Corinthians 4:4). These are the eyes designed to see reality, what we call truth. And they either see truth or, if the god of this world has his way, they instead see a counterfeit posing as the truth:

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:3–4)

Jesus is the truth (John 14:6), which is also why he is called the Word (John 1:1) and the light of the world (John 1:5). But seeing Jesus with true eyes only happens when people behold him in (or through) the truth he speaks — “the light of the gospel.”

That’s why the most effective apologetic approach that most of us can employ is some form of what Philip used to counter Nathaniel’s skepticism: “Come and see” (John 1:46). More than anything, we want to invite people to the self-authenticating revelation of Jesus Christ in the Bible. We want to help them look at the Book. And that’s because,

[T]he heart of God’s glory, as he reveals it in the Scriptures, is the way his majesty is expressed through his meekness. I called this God’s paradoxical juxtaposition of seemingly opposite traits. Jonathan Edwards called it “an admirable conjuction of diverse excellencies.” This pattern of God’s self-revelation in lion-like majesty and strength together with lamb-like meekness and service runs through the whole Bible and comes to its most beautiful climax in the person and work of Jesus Christ in dying and rising for sinners. (A Peculiar Glory, pp. 225–226)

The glory of God’s supremely majestic strength and his supremely humble meekness matches the God-designed template of the human heart. And when people look at the Book, if the Lord grants their heart-eyes sight, that’s what they will see revealed there. They will discover the One they were designed to know and love more than any other.

Help Them Look at the Book

None of this devalues the work of brilliant Christian apologists and scholars. God raises them up to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) and certainly uses them to equip and encourage the saints.

Rather, this is simply an encouragement to us not to undervalue the power of the Bible. For us ordinary mortals it can be tempting to think that we need to attend more seminars, classes, or conferences, or we need to read more apologetic or evangelism books before we’re ready to share our faith. These can be helpful, but the power to help people really see Jesus isn’t resident in techniques or cultural knowledge or historical or logical defense arguments. It’s in the Bible.

What we really need is confidence in the Bible. It is the only Spirit-inspired, Spirit-crafted, Spirit-preserved, self-authenticating revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It is the most influential Book of all time, the most powerful apologetic device in the world, and most of the Christians in the world have seen the glory of Jesus in it because some faithful, ordinary person pointed them to it.

And God likes it that way. He loves to demonstrate his power by choosing weak and foolish people like you and me to point others to him (1 Corinthians 1:26–29). So go ahead and take that hesitant step of faith. Point someone to where all the beauty comes from. Help them look at the extraordinary Book.

More at Desiring God

A Peculiar Glory | If you need a fresh dose of encouragement and confidence in the Scriptures, read this excellent book by Pastor John (a free PDF version as well as others are available at this link).

The Divine Majesty of the Word | John Piper delivers a wonderful biographical message on the life of John Calvin, with a particular emphasis on Calvin’s experience (and ours!) of God’s self-authenticating revelation of himself in the Scriptures.

What Does It Mean to Say that Christ Is Self-Authenticating? | In this excerpt, John Piper explains how Christ is self-evidently glorious.

Die to Your Flesh and Live

In Gethsemane, after agonizing prayer, Jesus came looking for his friends whose prayerful attentiveness would have been such a comfort to him. But he found them sleeping. What he said to them was gracious but firm: “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).

We understand what it means to have weak flesh, don’t we?

But we also find our weak flesh to be powerful, opposing our willing spirit’s intentions and resolve to follow Jesus in the obedience of faith (Galatians 5:17; Romans 1:5). Fighting it is a daily struggle. What do we prayerfully watch for to escape the power of our weak flesh?

Our Weak Flesh Is a Powerful Enemy

It’s a paradox that we often experience the weakness of our flesh in the strength of its sinful cravings and compulsions. It’s maddening because our flesh frequently demands to think or do things other than what we should be thinking or doing at the moment. These range from mildly distracting to disturbingly dark:

When, like the disciples, we should be watching and praying, our flesh really wants to sleep.
When we should be sleeping, our flesh finds Facebook browsing fascinating.
When we should be diligently teaching our children (Deuteronomy 6:7), our flesh would love to watch a relaxing, even family-friendly movie.
When we should be meditating on Scripture, our flesh becomes a fountain of ideas for reorganizing the room, improving the yard, or critiquing the political candidate.
When we should be focusing on our work, our flesh brings up that focus-dominating fear.
When we should be cutting our calories, our flesh demands a sugar-laced snack.
When we should be eating because we’ve become undernourished due to believing lies about how our weight relates to our value, our flesh screams shame-filled things to stop us.
When we should be relishing the joy and freedom of sexual purity and fidelity, our flesh desires to imagine or view defiling, lewd images.
When we should be humbly resisting premature conclusions regarding a potentially offensive concern or comment, our flesh immediately turns defensive and suspicious, proposing fantasy scenarios that will indulge sinful anger with a feeling of righteous indignation.

The exasperation of this experience made Paul cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). And if it weren’t for God’s grace toward us, our flesh would hold us enslaved (Romans 6:20; Ephesians 2:3).

How God Conquers the Power of Our Weakness

But in Christ, God sets us free not only from the penalty of our sin (Colossians 2:14), but also from the power of our sin that remains very active in our flesh (Romans 8:2; Romans 7:23):

For God . . . [by] sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin . . . condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3–4)

The Word became flesh (John 1:14) in order to be condemned in our place for our sin and in doing so paid the full penalty of our guilt. And then Jesus gives us his Spirit to empower us to walk in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4) so that we no longer are enslaved to cravings and compulsions of our flesh (Galatians 5:16).

Sin-penalty paid, Spirit-power imparted, and the kingdom inherited (Matthew 25:34), all because our King is so gracious and lavishly generous. What a gospel!

Prayerfully Watch for the Spirit

But because our weak, sin-infected flesh still seeks to powerfully influence us away from the gospel, Jesus commands us to watch and pray (Matthew 26:41). Watch and pray for what? We watch and pray for the Holy Spirit.

We are to be led by the Spirit. And the Spirit guides us into truth by speaking to us the word of Christ (John 16:13; Romans 10:17). The flesh leads us by carnal and selfish desires (1 John 2:16). Only Jesus has the words of eternal life (John 6:68). That’s why “it is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63).

That’s also why Paul tells us, “walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:16–17).

And that’s also why Paul says, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:13–14).

God’s children are those who follow the leading of God’s Spirit by heeding Jesus’s living word (Hebrews 4:12; John 6:68). They “stay awake” (Mark 13:37), remaining alert, praying in the Spirit and watching for the Spirit (Ephesians 6:18). They, like the first disciples, do none of these perfectly yet. But, though stumbling at times, they walk by faith in Jesus’s words and not by the sight of their fleshly cravings (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Choose Life: Die Every Day

When it comes to resisting the powerful demands of our weak flesh, the Bible describes it as a kind of dying (1 Peter 2:24). That’s because our deceived, corrupt flesh believes our life will be happier if we gratify it. Denying it can feel like dying to something life-giving.

We must remember every day that “nothing good dwells in [us], that is, in [our] flesh” (Romans 7:18). When we, in following the Spirit’s direction, die to our flesh, we are dying only to what would destroy us, things like “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness” (Colossians 3:5). All we are dying to is death. That kind of dying is worth dying every day (1 Corinthians 15:31). For in such dying we choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19).

When our weak flesh seems to wield great power through its cravings and compulsions, we must watch and pray for the Spirit, for greater is he that is in the new (regenerate) us than he that is in the old us. All our sinful flesh will yield is death. But if by the Spirit we put our flesh to death, we will live (Romans 8:13).

Today, when your unruly flesh makes maddening demands on you, remember: It will not kill you to die to your flesh. You are choosing life.

More from Desiring God

What Does It Mean to “Kill Sin By the Spirit”? | Pastor John answers a listener’s question about Romans 8:13.

Don’t Waste Your Weakness | Don’t focus too much on finding your strengths. Give attention to identifying and exploiting your weaknesses. God has not given them to you in vain. Exploit them. Magnify the power of Christ with them.

Jesus Chooses and Uses Failures | Shame over past failures and sins can haunt and inhibit us in many ways. And Satan seeks to steal and destroy our faith by shoving our failures in our face. But Jesus intends to redeem us completely.

Like Any Prince

You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince. (Psalm 82:6–7)

Prince sang on the soundtrack of my high school years. I can still see right where I was sitting in Wayzata High School’s cafeteria during sixth-period study hall listening to Prince’s “1999” blasting on cassette from someone’s boom box a few tables away. And the year of my graduation, Purple Rain poured in abundance from the radio (as a multi-platinum album) and the multiplex (as an Academy Award-winning film).

Prince Rogers Nelson, like me, was born and raised in Minneapolis in roughly the same era. He was catapulted into the biggest Minnesota thing since Bob Dylan.

People often shared their Prince-sightings. My oldest brother had a very early one. He and a friend, both aspiring young musicians in the late 70s, were in a local recording studio one day when they were introduced to this young, diminutive, shy, soft-spoken guy. My brother had no clue that this quiet teen who seemed to prefer lingering in the corner was about to become one of the most iconic performers of all time.

Disturbing Genius

Prince was a musical genius. The son of a jazz pianist (also named Prince), he began composing at age seven and soon learned to play more than a dozen instruments — playing all the instruments on a number of his albums — and composed in numerous musical genres.

And he was amazingly prolific. He put out 39 studio albums in 37 years, another seventeen live or compilation albums, wrote many songs under pseudonyms for other recording artists, produced and starred in four feature films (directing three of them), and toured aggressively and globally for most of his career.

But Prince was also disturbing. He purposefully cultivated a sensual, sexually ambiguous image that combined masculine bravado with a petite, androgynous appearance. Between 1993 and 2000, Prince went by the “name” of a symbol, which was supposed to be representative of both male (♂) and female (♀).

Many of his songs were sexually explicit, and he pushed social boundaries to new levels of tolerance for open depravity. Hearing one of Prince’s songs in 1985 prompted Tipper Gore (the former wife of former Vice President Al Gore) to launch a campaign to have record companies put “Parental Advisory” labels on albums with explicit content.

Alongside his lewd songs would be songs with religious themes. Raised a Seventh Day Adventist, Prince identified by 2001 as a Jehovah’s Witness, which just added to his enigmatic reputation. He stopped using profanity and would speak openly about his faith at times in interviews, while still cultivating, and by all observation celebrating, a sexually charged sensuality.

The Day the Music Died

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, on the morning of April 21, the controversial, enigmatic, meteoric, mercurial, musical life came to an end. Prince was found dead in an elevator in his beloved studio home, Paisley Park in Chanhassen, a suburb of Minneapolis.

Tributes are pouring in. Flowers are being placed outside the First Avenue nightclub in Minneapolis that Prince favored and made famous. His legacy will be predicted, his achievements lauded, and his music will be covered by many musicians in memoriam.

But these will soon pass. Like Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, and Hank Williams, Prince Rogers Nelson’s music will be remembered, but our lives will quickly move on. Despite the grandiose words that are now being spoken, the artist and the significance of his art will fade with startling speed from the public consciousness.

Like Men You Shall Die

And so it is with us all. As the psalmist wrote, “like men you shall die, and fall like any prince” (Psalm 82:7). Prince has fallen. And so shall we. As we contemplate another celebrity death, it is not a day for us to judge the fallen man. He has a Judge, for “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

Rather, it is a day to remember that our one death is coming. And the question for us is not What will be my legacy? or Will I leave a lasting mark? but Am I ready for the judgment that will follow?

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How to Kill Sinful Anger

All sinful anger is hard to fight. It’s a selfish, hot-blooded passion our flesh enjoys indulging. But I find it particularly difficult to fight the sinful anger that I feel I have a right to feel.

Angry Over a Perceived Injustice

This kind of anger is different than irritation or short-term mad-flares. We usually know those are wrong, because they are usually manifestly wrong. But anger we want to justify typically results when we feel disillusioned, disappointed, discouraged, or hurt. It might be because:

A relational conflict keeps recurring despite countless attempts at resolution;
An intractable, exasperating personal weakness keeps dogging us despite countless attempts to change;
We feel trapped in a difficult, painful, or apparently dead-end situation;
A betrayal has left us suffering and our betrayer prospering;
We are seeking God’s guidance on an important decision and he just seems quiet;
In spite of all our labors and prayers, a reviving, regenerating move of the Holy Spirit in our family or church or community just doesn’t come.

We can feel that it’s our right to be angry over such things because from our perspective they appear unjust and therefore we feel more a victim than a sinner.

Angry Over Ambiguity

Or perhaps we’re angry over the ambiguities such situations raise for us. They leave us with questions. At a high level we know that God promises to work all things together for our good (Romans 8:28), but closer to the ground, where we live, things look more ambiguous and we’re confused.

Is it possible that things are as they are because we aren’t working out our own faith like we should (Philippians 2:12–13)? Are we, like the disciples, not seeing the results we desire because our faith is defective (Matthew 17:19–20)? Are we not praying correctly or praying enough (Luke 18:1–8)? Like the twelve Christians in Ephesus, are we ignorant about something important (Acts 19:1–7)? Do we feel stuck because God isn’t acting or because we aren’t?

When we look at our situation, we aren’t exactly sure. We can think of biblical examples that point in different directions. What does God want from us? Why doesn’t he make it more clear?

Frustration builds. Perceived injustice and ambiguity can tempt us to anger. And the anger can feel seductively justifiable.

How We Know Our Anger Is Not Righteous

However, this kind of anger is not righteous anger. A tree is known by its fruit (Luke 6:43–45). We can tell if anger is sinful because we feel its defiling effect of impurity on us.

Righteous anger bears redemptive fruit. In righteous anger, we join God in anger over evil. It is an anger we feel with God, not at God. This kind of anger moves us toward acts of faith and love and true justice. Righteous anger feels grief (Mark 3:5), and because it is actually an expression of love, a deep displeasure over the way evil defames God and destroys people, it is not arrogant or rude or stubborn or resentful (1 Corinthians 13:4–5). It does not, in reality or fantasy, want revenge (Romans 12:19–20). And since we join God in this love-induced displeasure, it moves toward prayer.

But sinful anger does not bear redemptive fruit. Rather, it leaves us with a grey, burned-over barrenness of exasperated frustration. It produces a sour feeling in the pit of our gut. Sinful anger alienates us from God. It does not move us toward acts of faith and love and true justice, but rather toward acts of selfishness like sullen withdrawal, irritability, rudeness, obstinacy, and bitterness. Sinful anger is characterized by the self-oriented grief of self-pity, not godly grief over evil. And it produces the cancer of cynicism that eats away at faith, eroding our desire to pray.

We all know that sinful anger needs to be killed, but this kind is hard to kill because its objection is so emotionally compelling: “But I have a right to be angry!” That’s how it feels; how we want it to feel. It speaks self-flattering words to us that feed our pride and, like sexual sin, there is a selfish pleasure in indulging it and the sinful part of us doesn’t want to stop.

Killing Our Right to Be Angry

There is only one way to put sinful anger to death: self-humbling. Sinful anger is fueled by pride, so we have to cut the fuel supply. And most of our anger is diffused in two simple, self-humbling ways.

We must pray. We know that, but the problem is that when sinful anger is roused we don’t feel like praying. And that’s what we need to remember: Expect to not want to pray. Prayer itself is an act of self-humbling faith. Despising our initial emotional resistance, praying from the heart really does begin to diffuse anger. God wants us to be very honest in our prayers. Regardless of perceived injustice or the ambiguity we experience, we don’t have a legitimate reason to be angry with God. Anger at God is unbelief. But we most definitely need to honestly and frankly confess our anger with him, repent as best we can, and plead for his help to understand what we can and to trust him with what we can’t. He promises to respond to our humility with grace (James 4:6).

We must talk about it. Pride hates confessing sin to other people. If we feel resistance to doing it, it’s an indicator that pride is likely at the root. Talking to someone about it wages war on sinful anger. It has a head-clearing effect on us. And objective input helps correct our perspective and honestly address the question, “Why do I have a right to be angry?” Answering this question out loud often exposes our errant presumptions and pride.

Killing sinful anger that feels justifiable is hard. It’s an insidious lie disguised in a robe of justice. And it is spiritually malignant. When it is metastasizing, it feels deceptively life-giving to indulge and humbling ourselves feels like death. But the opposite is true.

“The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). Our sinful anger will never produce justice nor will it provide answers to ambiguity. But humbling ourselves before God (1 Peter 5:6) will ensure that ultimate true justice prevails (Psalm 37:6) and all ambiguity will in God’s time receive the needed guidance (Proverbs 3:5–6).

More from Desiring God

It Is Never Right to Be Angry With God | John Piper explains why it is never right to be angry with God. Anger at sin is good, but anger at goodness is sin.

How Can We Be Angry and Not Sin? | This article examines what righteous anger looks like in a Christian.

How to Resist Temptation’s Mirage Moment | Temptation is a disorienting experience, and a key to resisting it is learning to recognize its “mirage moment.”

How to Resist Temptation’s Mirage Moment

Temptation is not sin. We know this because Eve was tempted before she fell and Jesus was tempted, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Temptation is a disorienting, defiling experience when evil is presented to us as good. Destruction comes dressed up to look like happiness. Sin only occurs when we believe that the destructive lie can actually grant happiness.

One key to resisting temptation is learning to recognize what I call the “mirage moment.”

The Mirage Moment

A mirage is that hallucination parched people sometimes experience in a hot desert. A real desire for water and the shimmering heat of the sand play disorienting games with the mind and emotions. A refreshing oasis seems to appear in the distance promising the happiness of a quenched desire.

A thirsty person might know that no oasis has previously existed in that location. But his desire to be happy, fueled by the hope that this time he just might find happiness there, or at least relief from misery, tempts him to believe the vision. If he yields, he discovers his hope was hopeless and his desire dashed because the oasis was a sham.

In temptation, the mirage moment occurs as we are tempted by a vision promising happiness. Some shimmering oasis of promised joy or relief from despair appears where God said it shouldn’t be.

The mirage’s appearance taps into our real desire to be happy. Our disoriented emotions begin to respond to this desire with a feeling of hope — hope that maybe this time, even if we’ve been disappointed many times before, the oasis will quench our desire. But we know that God has told us it is a false hope.

So we are faced with a choice between temptation’s compelling appearance and God’s promise. We are tempted, but have not yet succumbed to sin.

Learning from Eve’s Mirage Moment

The most notorious mirage moment in history is recorded in Genesis 3. And it illustrates a pattern consistent in all the temptations that we face.

The satanic serpent showed up in the garden and questioned Eve about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve’s explanation shows that she clearly understood God’s promise and warning (Genesis 3:1–3).

Then came Eve’s mirage moment. The serpent replied:

“You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw . . . (Genesis 3:4–6)

There it is: the mirage. Eve saw something she had not seen before:

[Eve] saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. (Genesis 3:6)

Eve was experiencing the defilement of evil temptation. She was being told something very different about the tree from what God had told her, and so the tree suddenly looked different to her and she felt different about it.

God created Eve (and all of us) so that the meaning of her sensory impressions was shaped by what she believed to be true. Satan knew this. He knew that if he could change the meaning of the tree for Eve from the curse of death (Genesis 2:17) to the key to a happy life (Genesis 3:5), the tree would cease to look dangerous and begin to look desirable. It would tempt her to hope in something different than God’s promise and she might fall for it.

Satan manipulated Eve’s God-given desire to be happy and used it against her. He enticed her to corrupt this holy desire by pursuing it outside of God. And Eve indeed fell for it, which corrupted her desire by believing the mirage, which furthermore gave birth to sin and death (James 1:14–15):

[Eve] took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)

Learning from Jesus’s Mirage Moment

Satan employed the same tactic when tempting Jesus (Matthew 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). Whether using food (Luke 4:3), or a cross-less path to power (Luke 4:5–7), or a public demonstration (test) of his divinity (Luke 4:9–11), Satan was trying to corrupt Jesus’s holy, God-given desires.

Satan knew (as the apostle Paul later wrote) that “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). But he also knew that what made these things holy was “the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:5) and that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). So Satan set before Jesus mirages to tempt him with faithless promises of divine happiness.

We who live with indwelling sin don’t know the levels to which the sinless God-man was affected. But we do know that what Jesus experienced were temptations. Jesus was given a choice between compelling deceptive appearances and God’s promises. And to each temptation, Jesus responded, “It is written. . . . ” He refused to believe Satan’s deceptive mirages or the emotions they roused. He kept food, power, the revelation of his divinity, and everything else holy by receiving them only through the word of God and prayer.

Recognize and Resist the Mirage Moment

Satan employs the same temptation tactics with us. And one key to not letting him outwit us (2 Corinthians 2:11) is to be on the alert to our mirage moments.

Identify the hope tempting mirages offer. The reason temptations are hard to resist is because hope is hard to resist. Temptations threaten us with missing out on happiness or less misery. We must ask ourselves what the mirage is really promising? Sometimes just saying it out loud breaks its spell.

Declare, like Jesus, “It is written” and take your stand on a promise God has made to make you happy. Don’t fight hope merely with denial. Fight false hope with true hope. Determine to hope in the God of hope (Psalm 42:11; Romans 15:13), not a shimmering hopeless mirage.

Expect the mirage to be tempting. God made you to want to be happy and the mirage has promised you happiness. So of course your emotions, which have responded to the initial deceptive vision, will want the happiness. They will feel demanding, but denying them won’t kill you. In this case, gratifying them just might kill you. Don’t allow your passions to be your dictators (Romans 6:12). Remember, emotions are gauges, not guides. They are indicatives not imperatives. They are to be directed, not to be directors.

To be tempted is not a sin. To yield to temptation is sin. Temptations are never truly as strong as they feel. Their power lies solely in the false hope they produce in us. Remember, it is hope that is powerful. God created us to hope in him (Psalm 43:5).

In temptation, Satan is just trying to use our God-given desire for hopeful happiness against us. If we can identify his false promise of hope, declare the true promise of hope, and expect to weather some disorienting emotional urges, the mirage will dissipate and our hope in God’s promised happiness will strengthen.

More from Desiring God

How to Endure Common to Man Temptations | Our most common temptations are generally the most dangerous temptations we face, because Satan knows us and aims at where we are weakest: our profound, pathological fallen selfishness.

Your Emotions Are a Gauge, Not a Guide | Remember, your emotions are gauges, not guides. Let them tell you where the spiritual attack is being made so you can fight it with the right promises.

Can Jesus Really Understand My Temptations? | John Piper responds to a listener’s question, “Can Jesus really identify with me when he doesn’t know the experience of indwelling sin raging war against the Spirit?”

Jesus Helps Our Unbelief

According to the apostle John, Thomas was not present on Easter Sunday evening when Jesus appeared to the other disciples and devoted followers (John 20:24). And regardless of what they said, Thomas refused to believe that Jesus had risen till he saw Jesus with his own eyes (John 20:25) — a declaration that earned him for posterity the unflattering title “Doubting Thomas.”

The Holy Spirit did not inspire John to include this account in order to embarrass Thomas. Rather, it’s recorded because God has important things to teach us about our own doubts and what kind of “seeing” really brings us joy.

“I Will Never Believe”

Early Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene first reported that Jesus’s body was missing (John 20:1–2), Thomas felt like he was in good company. None of the apostles, except perhaps John (John 20:8), really believed that Jesus was alive.

But then the women claimed to have seen him (Matthew 28:9), and then Peter (Luke 24:34), and then a follower named Cleopas (Luke 24:13–32). Lastly, by that evening, all of Thomas’s closest friends claimed that Jesus had suddenly appeared in the middle of a locked-door meeting where he spoke and even ate with them (John 20:19; Luke 24:42–43) — a meeting Thomas missed for some reason.

So, Thomas soon found himself in bad company. The only other member of the Twelve who had not seen the risen Christ was Judas Iscariot.

As Thomas listened to his friends excitedly describe their encounter with Jesus, it did not excite him. He was skeptical and frustrated. And he even blurted out, “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).

Why Didn’t He Believe?

Why did Thomas respond this way to friends he knew so well and trusted? The words he spoke tell us of the horror he actually saw.

The Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death are sparse on details, so it’s hard for us to feel what Thomas felt as he actually watched Jesus die. In fact, Thomas’s declaration of unbelief (“unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails”) is the only time nails are mentioned in the Gospels as part of Jesus’s crucifixion. Most of what we know about Roman crucifixion we learn from other sources.

The slaughter of Jesus outside Jerusalem had been so gruesome that it was all but humanly impossible for Thomas to imagine a resurrection of Jesus’s body. True, Thomas had seen Lazarus’s resurrection. But Lazarus had died of an illness, and Jesus had been there to raise him. Jesus had been torn to shreds and died.

How does a mutilated man raise himself? Let’s not assume too quickly that we would have responded differently had we seen what Thomas had seen.

Sight for Sore Eyes

Thomas’s doubts may have been humanly understandable, but they were not commendable. They were sinful, as is all unbelief (Romans 14:23).

And Jesus was not in a hurry to relieve Thomas’s doubts. He let Thomas stew in his own unbelieving words uncomfortably alone in the midst of a joyful fellowship of believers for eight awkward days (John 20:26).

Finally, a full week after Easter, Jesus appeared when Thomas was present and said, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” (John 20:27).

Thomas’s repentance was beautiful: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen

Then Jesus said something that was meant not only for Thomas, but also for all of us: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Thomas had been chosen by Jesus to be a unique authoritative witness of his resurrection (Acts 1:22) — that’s why Thomas was granted the gift of seeing Jesus with his physical eyes.

But Jesus’s rebuke is clear enough. There were others who had not yet seen Jesus, but still believed in his resurrection. And their believing was more blessed than Thomas’s seeing. Why? Because those saints relied on their eyes of faith more than the eyes in their heads — and faith-seeing, in this age, results in more joy than eye-seeing.

This is why Peter, Thomas’s fellow eyewitness, later wrote, “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8–9).

Believing Is True Seeing

Faith, as the Bible describes it, is not blind. Unbelief is blind. Faith sees a reality beyond what eyes can see, a reality that God reveals to us which is more important, in fact more real, than what we can see with our physical eyes (Hebrews 11:1).

God reveals this reality to us through his living and active word (Hebrews 4:12) that lights our path (Psalm 119:105). After his ascension, Jesus is seen only through the inerrant testimony of his prophets and apostles, recorded in the Scriptures, and the imperfect testimony of followers whose heart-eyes have opened. This is the blessed kind of seeing that enables us to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Glorious, inexpressible joy comes not by seeing Jesus now, but by believing in him now. Those who believe in Jesus in this age are more blessed than those who have seen him. Because believing is true seeing. And it is faith-sight, not eyesight, that results in eternal life (John 3:16).

Thomas had heard Jesus once say, “I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). Jesus had come to open the eyes of the heart. Eyesight was never a guarantee that people really “saw” Jesus. Judas was the greatest witness to this tragic truth.

Like he did for the other ten, Jesus forgave Thomas of his faith-failure and graciously restored him. But because of Thomas’s unbelief, Jesus made him a gracious example for us of the wrong kind of seeing to demand. If we find our seeing of Jesus is impaired, Thomas teaches us not to declare, “Unless I see I will never believe,” but rather, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

More from Desiring God

Do Not Disbelieve, But Believe | Jesus’s rescue of Thomas from his unbelief is an encouragement to all of us who wrestle with doubt and unbelief.

Battling Doubt and Cynicism in Our Bible Reading | John Piper answers the question: “Do you have any advice for attacking a spirit of doubt and cynicism when reading the Scriptures?”

I Have Seen the Lord | Preaching from John 20:1–23, John Piper explains what it means for us now to “see the Lord.”