Jon Bloom's Blog, page 39

How Should We Respond to Caitlyn Jenner?

Former Olympic champion, and current pop celebrity, Bruce Jenner, revealed in a recent interview his lifelong struggle with gender confusion. This week he announced that he is changing his public identity from male to female, his given name from Bruce to Caitlyn, and celebrating his gender transition by being featured in a photo shoot and cover article for the July edition of Vanity Fair.

Jenner has suddenly become the most well-known transgender person in the world and has brought transgender issues into the headlines and cultural conversation.

So how should we, as Christians, respond to Jenner’s transition?

With Compassion

In 1976, Bruce Jenner won the Olympic gold medal in the decathlon. Instantly, he became a global mega-star. But when making public appearances afterwards, no one knew that sometimes under his suit, this handsome, muscular, charismatic epitome of masculine virility and success was wearing a bra and pantyhose.

Jenner was nine years old when he first secretly tried on his sister’s dress because he felt like he wanted to be a girl. He didn’t understand his strange desires and had never heard of anyone else who felt this way. He had no one to talk to. He was a little boy carrying a secret shame that made him feel isolated from everyone else. He always felt like a fake — like he was constantly pretending to be a boy, even though he was one.

A gifted athlete, Jenner excelled in every sport he played throughout his teens, eventually becoming world-class in track and field in his twenties. But no one knew that part of what fueled his fierce competitive drive was a desperate effort to prove he really was a man. Always present in his consciousness, sometimes screaming at him, sometimes whispering to him from the shadows, was an inner voice telling him that he was female.

Adding to his confusion, his gender and sexual-orientation voices were dissonant: He had a heterosexual attraction to women. The inner conflict of his disordered desires, though not the sole cause, contributed significantly to the break up of three marriages.

None of this means that Jenner’s decision to self-identify as a female is okay. There are important reasons why it’s not okay (see the links below). Compassion does not mean compromising biblical truth. But sexual identity must be for us more than an abstract social issue. Real souls have endured real anguish over it. We must seek to understand their painful stories before we speak into their struggles. The more we know, the more compassionate will be our truthful response.

Christians are equipped to respond with real compassion for such struggles. We all understand from experience the distressing disorder of the inner man that occurs because of indwelling sin and the brokenness of the fall:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . . I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:15, 21–24)

With Prayer

Bruce Jenner, and every person who deals with gender or sexual-orientation disorders, bears the image of God and has a priceless soul. The first compassionate impulse we should have is to pray for them. Jenner professes to be a Christian. Whatever that means, he at least may have potential openness to biblical truth. Let us pray that the truth of the gospel will set him free (John 8:32), knowing how much Jesus loves to redeem and restore sin-broken people.

With Greater Understanding

Growing in our understanding of the nature of transgender and sexual-orientation disorders is necessary so that we don’t hold ignorant assumptions and say erroneous and insensitive things to people. And it would be wise for us to anticipate the possibility of discovering someday that our child, grandchild, cousin, nephew, niece, friend, co-worker, or possibly a parent is enduring such a struggle. If that should happen, we want to be safe people for them to talk to.

Beyond that, gender issues are only going to grow in prominence in our society. The nations of the West have fully legitimized many of them and are working them into the legal codes. The past cultural restraints are gone. We will increasingly be called upon to explain and defend the biblical position. We need to know what the Bible actually says about transgender and sexual orientation and why the church throughout history has held its positions. Greater understanding will make us both more compassionate and more articulate. (I’ve prepared a list of places to begin at the end of this article.)

With Truthful Love

If we are compassionate, prayerful people who reasonably understand transgender and sexual-orientation issues and what the Bible says about them, we are in a good position to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Speaking truth is itself a form of love, even if a person doesn’t receive it as such initially. But “in love” also means speaking with great respect, empathy, and appropriate humility. And it means a willingness to love strugglers with deeds (such as hospitality), not just words (1 John 3:18).

Regarding Jenner’s transition, it probably means being slow to speak, especially on social media. And if you do speak something truthful, seek to be an unusually respectful, gracious voice. Jenner is not likely to read your remarks, but maybe someone you know who is guarding a tender, shameful secret will. Speak as you would to a friend.

But pray for Jenner, that God will send to him one or two who will speak the truth of the gospel with Christ-like love and that he will have ears to hear. Jenner’s hope is that “as soon as the Vanity Fair cover comes out, I’m free.” But we know he will not be free. After some period of euphoric relief, he will find that he is still a “wretched man” who needs to be delivered from his body of death (Romans 7:24).

That is precisely why Jesus came: to deliver people like Bruce Jenner and us from our domains of sinful darkness (Colossians 1:13) and our failing, disordered bodies, and give us glorious, powerful, disorder-free resurrection bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” there is a greater hope than gender identity can provide (Romans 7:25).

It is Jesus’s truth that sets all of us free (John 8:32).

Related Resources

Is It Okay to Be a Christian and Transgendered?

Is Sexuality Identity My Choice?

Counsel for Those Considering Transgender

Genitalia Are Not Destiny, But They Are Design

List of Articles from The Gospel Coalition on Transgender

List of Desiring God Articles on Sexual Orientation

Dear Graduate

A significant journey is ending for you. No doubt you are eager to get going on the next one. But go ahead, savor the moment. Such clear rites of passage don’t come often in life. And thank God. Education is a profound gift.

And on behalf of your parents (as a parent of a graduating child myself), be gracious with their nostalgia and tears. It’s rite of passage for them too.

You’re probably receiving a lot of advice. But before you set off down the winding road before you, here are a few travel notes from my own journey. They may help you navigate what lies ahead.

The Road to Joy Is Hard

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13–14)

This road of life you’re gazing down is a road to life, but only if you follow the Way (John 14:6). The road is going to get very hard at times. Other roads will look very appealing to you when you are weary, discouraged, confused, angry, tempted by some desire, or grieving. They will appear much easier. Beware. The path of least resistance is the path of least reward. Jesus goes much further: A path like this leads to destruction.

Don’t let anyone tell you that life is all about the journey. It’s not true. The journey is all about the destination. What matters most is where you end up. You will have to forego many short-term pleasures and refrain from many “life experiences” in order to reach “that which is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19). Go for joy. Be a thoroughgoing Christian Hedonist. Seek the greatest treasure which gives the highest pleasure. Even though the road to it is hardest. Don’t settle for piddly pleasures. If God is your treasure, you’ll gain everything. If he’s not, you’ll lose it all.

Trust God’s Promises, Not Your Perceptions

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5–6)

Know the Book. Do not neglect the Book. Memorize the Book. Store the Book in your heart (Psalm 119:11).

Daily Bible reading has nothing to do with your performing a ritual for God’s approval, but has everything to do with your spiritual survival. The Book will keep you sane, because the Book tells you what’s real. What you perceive with your senses, how you interpret your perceptions, and how your emotions respond are unreliable indicators of reality. They will frequently not tell you the truth. And when they do, their reports will often be faulty because they are based on a very thin slice of reality. They can’t tell you the big picture. You need to know what God says is true and stand there.

Many, many times it will look to you like God’s promises are not real or will not come true. At those moments — I can’t stress this enough — don’t trust your perceptions. I have learned this lesson over the past 30 years in many different, and at times severe, ways. I tell you the truth: Not once have God’s promises failed me, but my perceptions have failed me again and again.

So, live in the Book and it will help you live.

Pray “Whatever It Takes” Prayers

“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9)

Ask God for everything. The world tells you that you are the master of your fate and must fend for yourself. But God wants you to believe that you “cannot receive even one thing unless it is given [you] from heaven” (John 3:27) and that “apart from [Jesus] you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Jesus invites you to ask, seek, and knock. Take him up on it.

And when praying for your own heart, don’t be afraid to pray, “whatever it takes.” God loves those kinds of prayers. He takes them seriously and answers them. You will not always recognize the answers initially, because they will come in ways you don’t expect. And they will often be harder than you expect. Because of this reality, some people fear praying in this way. Don’t be afraid. You will not regret such prayers. Through them God will reveal himself in ways you never knew before and you will receive some of the best gifts of this life.

Be You

“Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!’” (John 21:21–22)

Always remember, Jesus wants you to be you. He wants you to become a more sanctified, excellent you (1 Thessalonians 4:3). But he doesn’t want you to be anyone else. You bear God’s image in a unique way. You have a unique calling on your life.

You will be tempted all along the way to compare yourself with others. Sometimes you will feel the pride of superiority; sometimes you will feel the pride of inferiority. In all your comparisons, Jesus’s word to you will be, “What is that to you? You follow me.”

At the end of your journey, the status and achievements the world most admires will mean nothing. All that will matter is whether or not you faithfully stewarded what Jesus entrusted to you.

Recent Articles

When God Mercifully Ruins Our Plans

We Must Not Do Nothing

Why God’s Will Isn’t Always Clear

Conflicts: Our Laboratories of Love

I have a model Christian family.

I don’t mean that we are paragons of spiritual maturity, moral excellence and discipline. We’re not. What I mean is that my family is a microcosm of the church. If you want to see what the messy construction zone of sanctification-in-process looks like, we are a great model. But if you come, I suggest you bring your hardhat.

A Model Christian Family

Seven sinners live together in our home. We are middle-age, teenage, and pre-teen sinners who each have the sin-nature’s assumption that we are playing the lead role in the drama of existence. We all have different sin-infected temperaments, talents, desires, interests, preferences, proclivities, aspirations, strengths and weaknesses. We have different priorities and different pressures. We have different fears, anxieties and temptations and as we deal with them in our different ways and at different developmental and spiritual maturity levels, we have a tendency not to be aware of the others’ fears, anxieties, and temptations.

I hardly have to tell you what this means: it all ends up as compost for sinful conflict that erupts in some form almost every day.

What All Churches Have in Common

We are a model Christian family because the same kinds of conflicts that happen in our home have occurred in every church of which I’ve ever been a part.

I’ve been a member of a smaller large church, a mega-church, a house church, and a medium-small church. Two have been in urban contexts and two in suburban contexts. One reaches the very affluent; one reaches inner-city minorities; one reaches the highly educated; and one reaches the American middle class. The churches have had different theological orientations, ecclesiastical structures, missiologies and methodologies. But one thing they have all had in common: conflict.

And the kinds of conflict have been very similar. Wherever I’ve been, I’ve witnessed — and committed — the same kinds of offenses, disappointments, failures, self-righteousness, misunderstandings, suspicions, jealousies, coveting, insensitivities, selfish ambitions, gossip, slander, impatience, and sinful judgments.

Wherever two or seven or three hundred or five thousand or more Christians are gathered together in Jesus’s name, there sinful conflict will be among them. And that’s one reason why we so desperately need Jesus’s presence in the form of the Holy Spirit with us when we gather. It’s important to note that when Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them”(Matthew 18:20), it is sandwiched in the context of dealing with sin, conflict, and discipline in the church.

Why God Allows Conflicts in the Church

Here’s the bad news: you will not escape conflict by fleeing somewhere else. It will be there when you arrive, partly because some will be packed in your own luggage. If fleeing from conflict becomes your pattern, you will bounce from one church (or family) to another until in disillusion you give up on all the “hypocrites” and “idiots” (failing to see the irony in your judgments). You might even conclude that Christianity isn’t real because Christians aren’t loving, when what really happened is that you fled before you could see gospel love in action.

Here’s the good news: conflict is the laboratory in which love (agapē) grows. Conflict is the construction area where humility is built. Conflict is the radiology department where pride is exposed. Conflict is the field where our treasure is unearthed. Conflict is a discipline God uses to make us holy and bear the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:10–11).

God has not removed conflict from the church because, like the messenger from Satan who harassed Paul, God uses conflict as a means to keep us from being conceited (2 Corinthians 12:7). God is not glorified by our actual sin in conflict, but he is glorified when we see our sin, humble ourselves, repent through Christ, end our rivalries, seek reconciliation and push to count others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3–4). Christians all do this imperfectly, some exercising it more effectively than others because they are at different stages of sanctification and spiritual maturity.

The Beauty of Forbearing Love

Conflict is one of the best places we learn that “love bears all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). It’s where we learn “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which [we] have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:1–2).

The gospel is portrayed every time we forbear with someone in love, because we are loving them the way Christ loved us (Colossians 3:13). Forbearing love puts on display the beauty of Jesus’s gracious love for us, which it is why such love is worthy of our calling. It’s one of the ways the world knows that we are Jesus’s disciples (John 13:35).

And it’s one of God’s paradoxical ways: he often leads us toward the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3) through conflicts that require us to exercise a self-humbling, gracious love. That way sanctification and unity happen simultaneously, and in a way that shows the gospel to the world.

Bearing With Green Peaches

One of my favorite historical examples of forbearing love comes from John Piper’s biographical message on Charles Simeon, who pastored Trinity Church in Cambridge, England, for 49 years in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries:

One day, toward the beginning of Simeon’s ministry, he was visiting Henry Venn, who was pastor 12 miles from Cambridge at Yelling. When Simeon left to go home, Venn’s daughters complained to their father about Simeon’s manner. Venn took the girls to the back yard and said, “Pick me one of those peaches.” But it was early summer, and “the time of peaches was not yet.” They asked why he would want the green, unripe fruit. Venn replied, “Well, my dears, it is green now, and we must wait; but a little more sun, and a few more showers, and the peach will be ripe and sweet. So it is with Mr. Simeon.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Rev. Venn could have been personally offended by Simeon’s immature arrogance and encouraged his daughters in their self-righteous indignation. A conflict could have erupted that undermined the gospel in that region. But instead Rev. Venn, knowing his own sin and the gracious way the Lord had dealt with him, bore with the brash young pastor with faith-fueled patience and hope. And in his response, Rev. Venn likely was used by the Spirit to help his daughters ripen and sweeten.

Love Your Model Christian Family and Church

I love my model Christian family, though far from perfectly. It is my desire to see more and more the gospel privilege and calling God has given me to bear with them in love, knowing that I am presenting them the same privileged challenge (and they have their work cut out for them, God help them). And I love my local church, my band of redeemed stumbling saints, of which I am the chief stumbler. Our conflicts are our calling to love.

God knows how to turn green peaches ripe and sweet. Conflict is one of his means, if we will receive it in faith. All of us are green in some ways and so we all need to forbear and be forborn. God’s promise is that as we lovingly bear with each other’s green seasons, someday we will all reach the full maturity of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).

Until then, let love bear all things.

Related Resources

The Greatest of These is Love (sermon series)

Are Deeds a Better Sign of Love Than Words? (article)

Doctrine Matters for Deeds of Mercy (article)

When God Mercifully Ruins Our Plans

It is a priceless gift when someone shows you a gospel treasure hidden in plain sight in the Bible. My good friend, Jameson Nass, just did this for me in his excellent sermon on the tower of Babel from Genesis 11. His insights were so helpful that I want to share a few of them with you.

When Our Aim Is Our Name

You know the Tower of Babel story. The ancient people living on the plain of Shinar said,

Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:4)

The Mesopotamians’ had one aim: to make a name for themselves. God is not present in their aim. They are aiming at their own greatness.

And in these ancient Babel-onians we can see a picture of ourselves. Like them, we are sinners too often full of pride and selfish ambition, giving way too much thought about what others think about us and what our legacy will be. Like them, we too often have a ridiculous, exaggerated desire for our own glory and can put great effort into marshaling our resources and systems to achieve it.

God Will Mercifully Mess Up Our Aim

But here’s how God responded to the Ziggurat of human pride:

And the Lᴏʀᴅ came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. (Genesis 11:5)

The fact that God “came down” to view what men had built puts us all in our place. As Nass eloquently said, “God always has to ‘come down’ to examine our anthill achievements built in the sidewalk cracks of his creation.”

And so in his Trinitarian counsel, the Lᴏʀᴅ said,

“Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the Lᴏʀᴅ dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. (Genesis 11:6-8)

Let us make no mistake. God was not feeling threatened in his supremacy by collective human ingenuity. Rather, what God knew, and what the city builders did not know, was the devastation that sin would wreak if human pride were allowed to progress unimpeded.

We, who now have the benefit of a observing a few thousand years of recorded history, should know better than our ancient predecessors. The technologically accelerated 20th Century, and the thousands upon thousands of war dead we memorialize today, bear witness to how much evil can be unleashed when the best and brightest human minds put their heads together to build their Babels.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12)

So God confused Mesopotamians’ language and scattered them. And it was a great mercy. As Nass put it, “It was the mercy of God for him to make their lives difficult, mess up their one great aim, and give them what they hoped wouldn’t happen.”

God’s Gracious Purposes in Our Disorienting Disappointments

And God does the same kind of merciful confounding in our lives. And it is far more merciful than we know, certainly more merciful than it feels when we feel confounded.

We often do not know what we are really building when we embark on our achievements. We often aren’t aware of how deep, pervasive and motivating our pride is. We often are blind to how much we cherish the glory of our name. But God knows. And in mercy he confounds us, impedes us, and humbles us. And it is all mercy. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). When it comes to his children, God gives us grace in the act of opposing our pride because it makes us humble. For he knows that the more humble we are, the happier we are. The proud will be destroyed (Proverbs 16:18), but the humble will dwell with God (Isaiah 57:15).

The story of the tower of Babel contains a gospel treasure: even our disorienting disappointments and failures in making a name for ourselves have redemptive purposes. God loves us and knows what is best for us and in mercy he will not allow any achievement that we pursue for our own glory to rob us of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8).

There is no real gain in in making our name known. That’s Philippians 3:8 rubbish. The only real gain is Christ. So God mercifully thwarts our pride-fueled plans in order to make us truly happy.

Related Resources

When God Messes with Your Life Plan (article)

How Involved Is God in the Details of Your Life? (article)

God’s Sovereignty Over Evil in My Life (interview)

We Must Not Do Nothing

This weekend Americans will commemorate Memorial Day, a holiday of collective national remembrance. Many will gather in cemeteries and civic parks for grateful and sometimes tearful ceremonies. This will be a good and appropriate kind of remembering. It is important that we remember the immense price hundreds of thousands of soldiers have paid with the currency of their life-blood so that we can enjoy our political and religious freedoms.

But this kind of remembering will not demand much of us beyond renewing our grateful resolve to not take for granted our freedoms. There will be a brief recollection, hopefully a prayer and then we’ll move on with our leisurely plans.

A Demanding Remembering

But a Memorial Day kind of remembering will not suffice for our suffering Christian brothers and sisters. The remembering that God requires of us demands sustained action:

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. (Hebrews 13:3)

When the author of Hebrews tells us to “remember,” he isn’t talking about a fond, grateful private reflection. What he means is, “go help them,” and the original Greek conveys the sense, “keep helping them.” When we remember our war dead, we don’t remember them as though we were dead with them. But we are to remember the imprisoned Christians “as though in prison with them.” That is a demanding remembering.

We are to remember mistreated Christians as though we were sharing mistreatment. We are to react to our brothers’ and sisters’ affliction just like our entire body reacts to the pain when one member of our body is afflicted. That is a demanding remembering.

Where the Body Is Hurting

In northern Iraq, Christians are being brutalized and exterminated. They are being beaten, imprisoned, raped, kidnapped, extorted, and murdered. Their homes are being stolen or destroyed. Their wives and daughters are being stolen and destroyed — sold into sex slavery. Young prepubescent girls are fetching the highest prices from lecherous ISIS militants who believe Allah sanctions such sating of their lust.

Christians in North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and a host of other nations are suffering under terrible adversity and persecution. Boko Haram has wiped out 5,000 Christians in Nigeria within a year. This past Good Friday, 148 Christians were hunted and assassinated by Islamic militants at Garissa University College in Kenya. In Pakistan the Christian minority population is under a constant threat of violence, many marginalized into abject poverty, and 700 girls each year are kidnapped, sexually abused and forced to convert to Islam.

We Must Act

“Remembering” in Hebrews 13:3 is an imperative. Involvement at some level in is not optional. Remembering our suffering brothers and sisters in Christ must move us to action.

It seems clear from Hebrews 10:32–39, that the author was speaking into a local context of suffering when he wrote verse Hebrews 13:3. The readers likely knew the sufferers personally. Thus, from this text and others, we know that Christians bear a unique responsibility to care for suffering Christians in their local church and region.

But the New Testament ethic for actively remembering (i.e. helping) suffering fellow Christians reaches far beyond our local communities. Perhaps the clearest example is when Paul collected funds from churches throughout the Roman Empire for the relief of the suffering saints in Palestine (Acts 11:27–30; 1 Corinthians 16:1–3). The famine in Judea was a concern for all Christians everywhere who knew about it.

The suffering of millions of Christians in the world is a concern for Christians everywhere who know about it. And due to the ubiquitous media reports, most of us know about it.

What Must We Do?

Read — Seek to understand what’s going on. Indifference is often connected to ignorance. Spend time, perhaps 10 minutes 2–3 days a week, on sites like the ones referenced below in the “Pray” section and do Internet searches on phrases like “persecuted Christians.” You will have your awareness raised significantly and, Lord willing, your concern. Don’t shy away from graphic descriptions. We must not turn a blind eye from the real horrors being inflicted upon our brothers and sisters. We must remember as though mistreated with them.

Pray — Really pray. Open Doors, Voice of the Martyrs, and Operation World and others have collected helpful prayer resources to educate you and help you target your prayers, especially for the persecuted church. But there is also a lot of fodder for prayer in daily news reports. Have your family, friends, small group, etc., join you in intercession.

Give — If we know about Christian suffering, and we have this world’s goods, and we do nothing, or we give significantly beneath our ability, “how does God’s love abide in [us]” (1 John 3:17)? That’s what we must ask ourselves. Can we give to all needs? No. But we can give to some. If we ask our Father, he will direct us where to give over and beyond our local church’s needs. If we have an abundance, one of the reasons we have it is to supply for our suffering brothers’ and sisters’ needs. Where do we give? There are so many worthy charities and a few minutes’ Internet research will yield some great options.

Talk About the Needs — One way we “stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24) is talk about the needs and counsel and encourage each other on how to best meet them. Let’s help each other move beyond merely talking about how horrible some suffering is to what we can tangibly do about it.

Go — If the suffering we see is in close proximity, we have some responsibility before God to personally help relieve it. But a few of us are called to also travel thousands of miles to put our remembering to action. Every time we hear a report of suffering Christians, may we all breathe the prayer, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8). At some point it may be our privilege to have the Lord take us up on our offer.

Americans, remember with appropriate gratitude this Memorial Day the military deaths that purchased your freedoms. But Christians, don’t remember your imprisoned and mistreated brothers and sisters like Americans remember their war dead.

Hebrews 13:3 remembering demands action. We must not do nothing.

Related Resources

Suffering, Faith, and the Sign of Fearlessness (message)

Spreading Power Through Persecution (sermon)

To the Church in America Today (video)

Christian, Your Job Is a Ministry Job

Many Christians struggle with the sense that vocational ministry jobs are more “sacred” or “spiritual” than other jobs. Our terminology probably isn’t helpful: non-ministry jobs are often called “secular” jobs, which would seem to connote that they are less spiritual than ministry jobs. This bifurcated thinking has likely always been present in the church, except when and where the Christian doctrine of vocation has been taught well.

Roots of Sacred and Secular Vocations

Most cultures in human history have had religious doctrines and rites that required some human beings to act as mediators in some way between a deity and other human beings. This required the mediators to be in some sense holy, separated and purified from the rest of the profane world. Pagan religions had this and, of course, Judaism did too, with its Levitical priesthood and temple caste that adhered to strict rituals for holiness.

So the early Christians of both Jewish and pagan backgrounds would have brought into the church their concepts of “sacred” and “secular” vocations. And knowing human nature, it is likely that those who made “their living by the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14) were frequently seen (and sometimes saw themselves) as having more spiritual jobs. We know that within a few centuries of its founding the church was entrenched by this kind of fabricated bifurcation. A sacred Christian priesthood emerged that eventually took on again a type of mediator role between God and men.

Secular Jobs Are Ministry Jobs

The leaders of the Reformation brought a needed correction to this erroneous understanding and ecclesiastical structure. They saw that in the New Testament God draws no sacred/secular vocational distinctions within the church. The New Covenant vocational distinction is between the Son of God and the rest of us (Hebrews 2:17). For now “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). We have one high priest, “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” who offered himself as the once-for-all sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 7:26–27; 10:12). And being made holy by our great High Priest, Jesus, all Christians are peers, fellow workers in the Great Commission.

Of course Jesus does call some of his saints (a relative few) to serve the church vocationally in a variety of ways. But these folks are not the spiritual elite or some kind of Christianized Levitical caste who does the holy work while everyone else must soil their hands in the profane. Rather, in the New Covenant, God assigns vocational ministry workers to serve and equip the vast majority of the rest of his saints whom he deploys in the world to carry out “the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12).

In other words, Christians who serve in “secular” vocations are the ones who do most of the ministry and kingdom-expansion work that happens in the world. It’s the job of vocational ministers to equip these folks so they can do their various ministries effectively.

Your Job Is to Make God Look Great

In chapter eight of Don’t Waste Your Life, titled “Making Much of Christ from 8 to 5,” John Piper explains why secular work is designed to be God-like work:

So if you go all the way back, before the origin of sin, there are no negative connotations about secular work. According to Genesis 2:2, God himself rested from his work of creation, implying that work is a good, God-like thing. And the capstone of that divine work was man, a creature in God’s own image designed to carry on the work of ruling and shaping and designing creation. Therefore, at the heart of the meaning of work is creativity. If you are God, your work is to create out of nothing. If you are not God, but like God — that is, if you are human — your work is to take what God has made and shape it and use it to make him look great.

That is your calling today in whatever God has given you to do: make God look great. According to 1 Corinthians 7:17–24, your job (assuming it’s not inherently unethical or immoral) is a ministry assignment from God. It may not be your career assignment, but it’s today’s assignment. And God wants you to carry out that assignment with dependent faith, diligence, and excellence.

If God calls you someday to be a vocational minister, wonderful! It will be your privilege to be a servant-equipper to your brothers and sisters whose ministry it is to make God look great in the world. Just don’t long for vocational ministry because it’s more spiritual than other work. All work faithfully accomplished for the glory of Jesus in dependence on the Holy Spirit is spiritual work.

So wherever Jesus assigns you, “remain with God” (1 Corinthians 7:24) and see it as your ministry. Make it your mission “to take what God has made and shape it and use it to make him look great.”

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Four Ways to Fight the Fear of Missing Out

The Thing. It’s a strange thing, because it’s there and not there at the same time. What I’m talking about is The Thing that you don’t have that you think you need in order to be happy. And you know when The Thing is there because you begin to feel a low-grade panic that you don’t have it. The Thing makes you afraid that by not having The Thing you’re missing out.

The Thing

What is The Thing? This is essential to define if we want to fight the fear that The Thing tempts us with.

The first thing we need to get clear is that The Thing is not actually a real thing. It’s a fantasy. It’s attaching our deep longing for happiness to the belief that a person or possession or achievement or status or experience will produce it rather than God or his promises. It’s the belief that something apart from God holds a key to our happiness if only we could have it or more of it.

The Bible calls The Thing covetousness (Exodus 20:17). The sin of coveting is a faithless desire to possess something that doesn’t belong to us, fueled by an idolatrous belief that it will satisfy us. The desire is “faithless” because it isn’t rooted in our trust in God’s promises. And it is “idolatrous” because we invest in the object of our desire the power to satisfy us that belongs only to God.

Jesus warns us about The Thing in this text:

“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15)

Jesus goes right to the heart of The Thing’s deception: It promises us life in some kind of possession, which has no life to give. The Thing is our belief that we can get life from an idol.

Missing Out

The fear of “missing out” is frequently the indicator that The Thing is present. Coveting can feel like fear, which is one reason it is so powerful. It lands on us with the threat that if we don’t have The Thing we will miss out on some vital part of living, something that will make us happy.

And The Thing is insidious because it is so illusive. It’s a shape-shifter that assumes whatever form matches our current vulnerability to feeling like we’re missing out. Today it might be coveting someone’s income, tomorrow it might be coveting someone’s achievement, the next day it might be coveting someone’s harmonious family, next week it might be coveting someone’s opportunities or church or culinary expertise or advanced degree or capacities or interior design or . . . you name it.

This is why we often experience Facebook and Pinterest as purveyors of “missing out.” They point out all the things that we don’t have. They remind us of what we are not. They show us where we have not been.

Not only that, but a consumer economy is engineered to discover and capitalize on our fears of missing out. We are told hundreds of times daily that life consists in possessing some material, status, or experiential thing that we currently don’t have.

But the root problem isn’t in social media or in marketing. Our root problem is our active sin natures that tell us that idols satisfy. That fear that we are missing out is coming from inside us (James 4:1–2). That’s why Jesus tells us to be on guard against our own covetousness.

L.I.F.E.: Four Ways to Escape The Thing

Since life does not consist in what we possess, and The Thing we think we need is nothing more than a covetous fantasy, what do we do to escape the grip of the fear that we are missing out? Here are four suggestions for L.I.F.E. . . .

Listen to Jesus.

He alone has the words of life (John 6:68).

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15)
“For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:25)
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. . . . Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25)



Instruct your heart.

Preach to yourself; don’t listen to The Thing.

“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” (Hebrews 13:5)
“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19)
“Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (1 Timothy 6:9–10)
Do not “set [your] hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” and seek to “take hold of that which is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:17, 19)



Fast from feeding The Thing.

Shut down social media, turn off the TV, throw the magazine away. We need to starve our covetous appetite.

“If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.” (Matthew 18:9)



Engage in kingdom work.

The Thing focuses on what we don’t have. But God wants us to look to the needs of others. A God-given antidote to covetousness is serving the saints and others around us. Eyes off our navels and on to our neighbors.

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” (1 Peter 4:10)



You Will Never Miss Out

If your trust is in the “Author of life” (Acts 3:15), “all things are yours” (1 Corinthians 3:21–22). Jesus has purchased for us “every spiritual blessing” (Ephesians 1:3) and imperishable “treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20). No fantasy will ever deliver the happiness it promises us. We know this because no fantasy ever has. The fear that reveals The Thing is a false fear.

So leave it behind and “strain forward to what lies ahead [and] press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14).

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You Are God’s Workmanship

Here is a text I hope will fuel your faith and hope in whatever God gives you to do today:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10)

The Epic Poem of Creation

You are a piece of work — God’s work. When Paul says that you are God’s “workmanship,” don’t think of your clunky seventh grade shop class project. Think of The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, or The Faerie Queen — great works of epic poetry.

The Greek word Paul chose for this sentence is “poiema,” and what he had in mind is a work of masterful creativity. You can already tell that this is where we get our English word “poem.” Paul selected this word carefully. The only other time in Scripture he used it was in Romans 1:20:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Here it takes five English words to unpack poiema. All that we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell in the universe is reading God’s creative masterpiece, his epic poem. Homer, Dante, Milton, and Spenser were masterful poets, as far as humans go. But at their best, their poems are merely human imaginations. But when God imagines, his images come into real existence. His poems are living and active and multi-dimensional.

The Epic Poem That Is You

What Paul, and God through Paul, wants you to understand is this: You are an epic poem, a God-imaging poiema — become flesh and spirit. Your poem contains all the comedic and tragic drama of an existence more real and more meaningful than you have yet to comprehend. If you think you are a boring work of prose, you don’t yet see things as they really are. You are afflicted with a sin-induced cataract in the eye of the heart. But it is God’s intention and delight to heal your sight (Ephesians 1:18).

Tiny, insignificant you are more glorious than the sun and more fascinating than Orion. For the sun cannot perceive its Creator’s power in its own blinding glory, nor can Orion trace his Designer’s genius in the precision of his heavenly course. But you can. You are part of the infinitesimal fraction of created things that have been granted the incredible gift of being able to perceive the power and native genius of God! And to you, and you only, is given a wholly unique perception and experience of God’s holy grand poiema. There are some verses God will show only to you. What kind of being are you, so small and weak and yet endowed with such marvelous capacity for perception and wonder?

This is not inspirational poster kitsch. This is biblical reality.

Your Priceless Privilege of Today

No, there is nothing boring about you and there is nothing boring about what God has given you to do today. If you are bored, remember what Chesterton said: “We are perishing for want of wonder, not want of wonders.” Wonder at this: God has prepared just for you what he’s given you to do (Ephesians 2:10). Nothing you do today is unimportant. God is keenly interested in the smallest detail. You don’t need a more wonderful calling; you may just need more strength to comprehend the wonder of his loving ways toward you (Ephesians 3:17–19).

Today you get the priceless privilege of reading with your whole being one verse or maybe a few lines in the great poiema of God, while at the same time being a poiema which God will recite forever and will always remember.

God is wholly absorbed in his living epic. He wants you to be too.

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Don’t Let Pride Steal Your Joy

Pride is perhaps the greatest evil that exists. It wreaks destruction at every level of human experience. It’s present in small irritations and in the collapse of great civilizations. Pride is the root of every sin and pollutes every otherwise righteous affection, motivation, and action.

While humility sees glory and wants to praise it, pride sees glory and wants to possess it. Pride turns ambition selfish, perverts sexual desire into unspeakable lusts, interprets net-worth as self-worth, infects the wound of grief and loss with the bacteria of bitterness, and twists competition into conquest.

To be proud is what it means to be fallen, whether angel or human. Pride is our most deadly enemy — it is what makes Satan deadly to us. And it is alive and active within us.

But Jesus came to deliver us from the power of pride and restore all the joy it steals. “Death to the tyrant pride!” is the great gospel battle cry of freedom.

The Killer of Our Happiness

To understand what pride is, we must understand what humility is. Humility is essentially the recognition of what is real, simply assessing things as they really are. To be fully humble is to fully trust God (Proverbs 3:5), the Truth (John 14:6; 17:17), to govern according to his just ways and perfect work (Deuteronomy 32:4); to be content with what he gives us (Hebrews 13:5), knowing that “a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27).

Pride, then, is simply to think higher of ourselves, and therefore lower of others, than we ought to think (Romans 12:3). Oh so simple to define — and yet powerful to produce such hellish consequences. To be proud is to see the world through the lens of a lie.

In thinking ourselves far greater than really we are, we see truly great things far smaller than they really are. The lie of pride becomes a damned lie when we see God as smaller, and less important than he is. And in trying to make truly great things subservient to our false supremacy, pride shrinks our capacity to experience joy and wonder. In seeking to be gods and goddesses, we learn to only value what magnifies our glory or satisfies our appetites. We yawn at the Grand Canyon and fawn at the mirror.

The damned lie of pride is that it promises us happiness through God-usurping self-exaltation, which turns out to be the very thing that kills our happiness. The more highly we think of ourselves, the smaller our capacity for wonder and worship over what is most worthy.

Only Children Enter the Kingdom

This is why Jesus said that only children would enter the kingdom of heaven.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:1–4)

Why do only childlike people enter the kingdom of heaven? Because only childlike people have the capacity to enjoy it.

Think about it like this: children delight in going to a playground; adults chase delight in trying to possess their own “playground.” Children love to hear a great story; adults want to be impressively well-read. Children dance for joy at the thought of a doughnut; doughnut dancing is beneath the dignity of self-conscious adults. Children are easily absorbed in the greatness of something wonderful; adults are easily absorbed in wanting to be great.

Satan wants us to grow up and be like God. God, on the other hand, wants us to grow up and be like children. Listen to God. He knows that it requires humility to fully enjoy things for what they are. That’s why heaven is for children. Don’t listen to Satan. All he shows us is that proud “grown ups” cannot be happy in heaven.

Just Take the Next Humble Step

Jesus came into the world to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). And the devil’s most destructive work was to turn humble, wonder-filled happy creatures into proud, rebellious, miserable sin-slaves who think they can become gods and goddesses. On the cross Jesus purchased the reverse of this curse, to set us free from satanic pride and to restore our God-like joy and wonder.

This is why everything about the gospel is designed to expose our pride and force us to put it to death. God doesn’t humble us because, like some conceited tyrant, he takes pleasure in our groveling. He humbles us because he wants us to be happy and free — he wants us to reflect his image! God is perfectly humble; he sees all things — himself and everything else — exactly as they are. And he is the happiest being alive.

The only road for us proud sinners to travel to reach the promised land of joy and be the free children of God passes through the valley of humiliation. And it’s hard, and the trek requires real courage. Humbling ourselves often feels like death, but it really is not. It’s holy chemotherapy that kills the cancer of pride. “Whoever would save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24) means losing the “pride of life” (1 John 2:16) in order to gain what is “truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

Yes, through humility Jesus is inviting us into a heaven of joy and wonder. And it’s a heaven that begins now. To travel this humble road to joy only requires taking the next step, the one right in front of us today. It’s that step that our pride doesn’t want us to take.

Go ahead and take it. You won’t regret it. The joy of humility will grow and the misery of pride will shrink as you do. The holy habit of humility is formed one honest step at a time.

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Nothing Left to Hide

God wants us to be sincere. He makes this point very clear. He wants us to have a “sincere heart” (Ephesians 6:5), a “sincere mind” (2 Peter 3:1), a “sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5), a “sincere wisdom” (James 3:17), a “sincere devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3), and a “sincere brotherly love” for other Christians (1 Peter 1:22).

So what does “sincere” mean? The English word has its origin in Latin, though etymologists have a few different theories as to the root words. Here is the one I find most convincing:

The English word sincere comes from two Latin words: sine (without) and cera (wax). In the ancient world, dishonest merchants would use wax to hide defects, such as cracks, in their pottery so that they could sell their merchandise at a higher price. More reputable merchants would hang a sign over their pottery — sine cera (without wax) — to inform customers that their merchandise was genuine. (Taking Hold of God, 69–70)

It is a powerful illustration and, I think, gets closest to what the biblical authors meant: Let your heart, mind, faith, wisdom, devotion, and love be genuine, the real thing, “without wax.”

Hard to Live Without Wax

We all know insincerity when we see it. Most of us really don’t like it when we see it in others. And we roundly condemn misleading marketing by mendacious merchants.

But most of us also find it hard to fully live “without wax” ourselves. I know this by observation and experience. I know it mainly because I know me. I am a clay jar (2 Corinthians 4:7) — and one that is quite flawed. And my sin-nature is a mendacious marketing merchant. It does not want you or anyone else to see my defects. It wants to hide the defects behind a deceptive wax and sell you a better version of me than is real.

Multiply me by about seven billion, and you get a real waxy mess of a world. The serpent gave Eve the “wax treatment” in the garden, and we’ve been “waxing” our wares for each other ever since.

The Gospel for Waxers

But Jesus came to transform selfish self-sellers like us into sincere lovers of others. He came to cleanse us dishonorable jars and transform us into honorable jars (2 Timothy 2:20–21). On the cross, as Jesus became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), all wax was removed and our sin was revealed for what it really is: death and destruction. And then he took these sins away (1 John 3:5).

This truth means that Christians have nothing left to hide. We have no reason to wax ourselves to impress others. No, the one we want others to be impressed with is Jesus. And Jesus, in all his glorious genuineness, covers our sins in such a way that we don’t wax them over (Romans 4:7) and our weaknesses serve to show how gloriously powerful he is (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Our insincere wax would simply cover up his glory.

Being a Christian means we can put the wax away! Isn’t that good news?

But our remaining, prideful sin-nature does not want to put the wax away. It wants to dress up the grace of Christ with the wax of self-exaltation and promotion. So we will be repeatedly tempted to rub a little wax on our Facebook post, or why we’re running late, or why the assignment didn’t get done, or why we lost our temper, or how old we are, or how much we know, or what’s really the condition of our heart. But let us not listen to our mendacious marketing merchant sin-nature.

Instead, let us seek to “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit” (Philippians 2:3) and to love each other with a “sincere brotherly love” (1 Peter 1:22). Let us be real so that the reality of Jesus can be most clearly seen in us.

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